V  AG  A  BOND 


PERC1VAL  POLLARD 


VAGABOND  JOURNEYS 

THE     HUMAN     COMEDY 
AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 


VAGABOND  JOURNEYS 


THE     HUMAN     COMEDY 
AT  HOME  AND  ABROAD 


BY 


PERCIVAL    POLLARD 


Author  of 

"Their  Day  in  Court,"    published  by  this  house 

"Masks  and  Minstrels  of  New  Germany," 

and  other  books 


NEW  YORK 

THE  NEALE  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 
1911 


Copyright,  1911,  by 
THE  N1ALE  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 


THIS    BOOK 

is 
DEDICATED 

TO 

THE  ONE  WHO  GOES  WITH  ME 
C.  T.  P. 


254456 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface, 9 

CHAPTER  ONE 

Humor  and  Humanity  at  Sea, 13 

CHAPTER  Two 

Egypt  Ruined  For  a  Tourist  Holiday,     ....  40 

CHAPTER  THREE 

Vandalism  In  Modern  Florence, 51 

CHAPTER  FOUR:     MUNICH 

I     Modernity,  Paint  and  Carnival,     ....  59 

II     Illustrations  and   Posters, 77 

III     Art  and  The  Open -Air  Theatre,     ....  83 

CHAPTER  FIVE 

A  Typical   Cure   Resort, 101 

CHAPTER  Six:     PARIS 

I     Her    First    Invitation, in 

II     Paris  As  It  Passes, 134 

III     In  Cooking  Still  Supreme, 143 

CHAPTER  SEVEN:     BERLIN 

I     Newest  of   Great    Cities, 157 

II     The   Pursuit  of  Culture, 164 

III  Art  Appetite  Compared  With  Boston,     .     .  1/4 

IV  Night  Life, 183 

CHAPTER  EIGHT:     LONDON 

I     Bond  Street, 203 

II     Seen  From  a  Penny  Chair, 223 

III     A  Prizefight  by  Whitechapel  Rules,    ...  237 


PREFACE 

Distinction  no  longer  adheres  either  to  the  art  of 
travel  or  that  of  letters.  The  common  level  for  both 
sinks  year  by  year.  Especially  where  the  two  meet, 
in  what  is  loosely  called  a  book  of  travel,  have  the 
cheapness  of  journeys  and  the  vulgarity  of  writing 
conspired  to  increasingly  mediocre  results.  The  ex- 
istence of  an  intelligent  minority  undesirous  of  infor- 
mation, of  description,  careless  of  guidance,  and 
impatient  of  dogma,  comes  more  and  more  to  be 
forgotten.  It  is  to  such  an  intelligent  minority  that 
this  book  is  offered. 

These  pages  do  not  lead  to  Westminster  Abbey, 
nor  to  the  Louvre;  they  profess  no  rivalry  to  the 
guide-books.  The  reader  need  not  be  afraid  that 
either  facts  or  dogmatic  infliction  of  opinion  will  be 
forced  upon  him.  Here  are  simply  the  impressions 
of  one  individual,  a  few  random  excursions  with  a 
whimsical  temper. 

We  live,  today,  so  much  in  a  welter  of  facts  and 
figures  that  each  of  us  is  in  danger  of  losing  the 
qualities  of  fancy  and  philosophy.  We  become  al- 
most unable  to  form  our  own  peculiar  judgments, 
assert  our  prejudices,  think  for  ourselves.  Yet  I 
venture  to  declare  that  in  personal  expression — 
whether  about  art  or  about  travel — lie  not  only  such 
immediate  savor,  but  such  elixir  of  youth  as  never 
adhere  to  dogmatic  decrees  or  in  echoing  the  opinion 
of  the  majority.  To  an  individual  no  such  thing  as 


io  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

a  cut-and-dried  truth  exists.  The  opinions  of  Ruskin, 
of  Carlyle,  do  not  affect  us  today  as  definite  truths, 
but  as  expressions  of  personal  whim,  kept  sweet  in 
the  salt  of  style. 

The  reader  has,  it  is  hoped,  the  courage  of  his 
own  opinions,  his  own  prejudices.  If  those  do  not 
march  with  the  prejudices  and  opinions  in  this  book, 
let  him  at  least  be  sure  that  these  are  equally  honest. 

Never  too  often  can  we  fight  the  misconception 
that  journeys  have  arrival  as  object.  The  proper 
traveler  knows  that  journeys'  ends  are — the  journeys 
themselves.  For  the  fine  old  leisurely  lust  for  wan- 
dering, the  German  Wanderlust,  too  many  have  sub- 
stituted racing  by  the  clock  and  the  calendar.  To 
say  where  you  are  going,  where  you  have  been;  to 
count  the  miles,  the  places  and  the  days;  the  mind  of 
the  average  "traveler"  of  our  time  knows  no  more 
than  that.  Between  racing  across  continents  while 
devouring  guide-books,  and  solemnly  and  leisurely 
digesting  the  past,  present  and  future  of  each  af)ot 
visited,  is  there  no  middle  plan  fit  for  profitable 
philosophy?  If  my  book  scarcely  ever  tells  you  how 
to  get  anywhither  at  all,  if  it  offers  no  help  to  fledg- 
ling migrants,  are  there  not  some  of  you  whose 
sophistication  finds  solace  in  that  very  omission? 

To  the  artist  in  travel,  the  artist  in  life,  traveling 
mankind  itself  remains  the  paramount  study.  The 
commerce  of  men  and  women,  one  with  another;  the 
comedy  that  each  world-wanderer  takes  with  him  as 
his  luggage ;  these  are  the  unfailing  interests  to  those 
who  go  abroad  in  the  world  with  open  eyes.  Spots 
on  the  map  may  stale;  men  and  women  never.  With 
the  writer,  ever  since  as  a  child  he  was  hurried  across 


PREFACE  1 1 

the  war-girt  Franco-Prussian  frontier,  travel  has 
been  a  life-long  habit,  yet  the  fascination  in  its  op- 
portunities for  observing  the  human  comedy  never 
stales.  To  come  upon  a  new  town,  throw  guide- 
books into  limbo,  to  walk  about  the  streets,  to  watch, 
to  talk  with  the  people — the  proper  traveler  gains 
much  from  such  leisurely,  individual  contemplation. 

For  feelings  our  time  tries  to  substitute  facts.  I 
would  remind  each  of  my  readers  that  the  facts  are 
amply  taken  care  of,  and  that  what  is  needed  is  a 
Sentimental  Education  in  travel.  Material  aids  to 
travel  multiply  daily;  let  us  beware  of  leaving  our 
feelings  at  home.  Emotions,  more  than  motors,  give 
virtue  to  our  journeys.  These  are  no  sentimental 
journeys  of  mine,  in  this  book,  but  at  least  they  are 
not  patterned  upon  guide-books.  If  I  cannot  aspire 
to  the  noble  company  of  Sterne,  Stevenson,  Octave 
Mirbeau,  and  Otto  Julius  Bierbaum,  I  still  would  give 
the  reader  an  invitation  such  as,  whether  expressed  or 
not,  they  also  gave. 

I  would  ask  the  reader  to  explore — myself. 

October,  1911. 


CHAPTER    ONE 

HUMOR    AND    HUMANITY   AT    SEA 

NO  greater  cure  is  left  to-day  in  our  central 
civilization  than  a  sea  voyage.  There  is 
the  one  refuge  still  easy  for  us  all.  Some 
escape,  in  this  way,  bodily  and  spiritual 
ills;  some  escape  boredom.  Some  seek  leisure, 
others  rest,  others  variety.  Fashionables  and  snobs, 
plutocrats  and  populace,  all  go  down  to  the  sea  in 
ships  as  easily  today  as  once  their  forefathers  went 
out  on  Shank's  mare.  Some  take  as  luggage  one 
thing,  some  another;  some  their  dreams  and  desires; 
some  go  philandering;  some  are  on  philosophy  bent. 
Ample  indeed  are  the  chances  for  philosophy. 
Such  voyage  gives  much  to  think  upon  the  mutations 
of  fashion  and  of  sea  travel,  and,  above  all,  upon 
the  men  and  women  who  indulge  therein.  On  any 
voyage  giving  you  a  fortnight  or  more  at  sea,  to 
avoid  philosophy  about  our  fellows  is  almost  impos- 
sible. To  many  of  us,  in  fact,  it  is  the  chief  charm; 
others  come  to  it  grudgingly,  as  to  a  last  resort. 
From  the  old  northern  crossing  of  the  Atlantic,  it  is 
true,  charm,  for  all  but  the  most  determined  observer 
and  philosopher,  is  long  since  flown;  that  is  as  hack- 
neyed a  detail  to  the  sophisticated  as  a  train  trip  from 
New  York  to  Chicago,  from  Paris  to  Vienna.  Inno- 
cents abroad  no  longer  loom  noticeably;  the  general 
average  has  done  the  thing  innumerable  times  before, 

13 


H  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

and  will  do  it  still  more  times;  there  are  hardly  more 
chances  for  social  amenities  than  for  philosophy.  To 
say  to  another  nowadays  on  an  Atlantic  Limited  Ex- 
press: "Didn't  I  cross  with  you  on  the  Ruritania 
last  year?"  is  only  to  court  the  weary  answer,  "What 
month?  I  crossed  three  times."  Yet,  even  there, 
the  fascination  of  the  types  aboard  our  liners  seldom 
ceases,  and  if  one's  interest  in  humanity  remains  alive, 
romance  and  humor  may  come  even  on  those  regular, 
mail-carrying  rushes  from  port  to  port. 

Nothing  less  than  a  fortnight  serves  for  leisurely 
philosophy.  One  of  the  pleasantest  of  such  less  hur- 
ried crossings  is  the  one  that  points  toward  the  sea 
which  lies  midway  between  Europe  and  Africa.  A 
sonorous,  polysyllabic  title  it  has,  recalling  dreadful 
spelling  lessons  of  our  youth;  yet  what  does  it  mean 
save  simply  this:  the  Midway  Sea?  Let  us  call  it 
that.  A  large  and  easy-going  vessel;  dreams  of  sun- 
shine held  out  by  Madeira,  the  Azores,  Gibraltar, 
Africa,  the  Rivieras,  Sicily  and  Italy;  few  of  the 
thousands  who  have  gone  that  way  but  keep,  in  haze 
of  memory,  some  pleasant  pictures  of  it. 

There  are,  as  you  know,  any  number  of  lines  to 
choose  from.  This  is  no  place  for  pointing  out 
advantages  or  the  reverse;  these  things  must  be 
found  out  in  person.  Every  taste  is  catered  to.  If 
you  like  kindergartens  and  brass  bands  in  profusion 
and  without  ceasing,  there  are  lines  which  will  supply 
the  want.  If  you  like  unlimited  wine  with  your 
meals,  and  can  get  along  without  the  English  lan- 
guage, there  are  lines  which  will  give  you  that.  If 
you  prefer  walking  in  an  air  of  fashionable  aloof- 
ness, under  a  skipper  who  rarely  condescends  to  say 


AT    SEA  15 

good  day  to  you,  you,  again,  can  also  be  supplied. 
But — unless  you  care  to  address  me  privately,  under 
secret  seal,  and  with  inclosure  of  a  fee  large  enough 
to  deaden  me  to  all  results — you  will  never  discover, 
until  you  actually  make  the  voyage,  which  is  really 
the  line  you  ought  to  have  taken.  Each  of  us  has 
tastes  and  desires  other  than  our  neighbors.  These 
liners  supply  all  such  tastes ;  it  is  for  you  to  find  the 
right  one. 

SOME  of  us,  as  I  said,  come  to  philosophy  with 
smiles,  some  come  as  a  last  resort.  The  cynic  view, 
for  instance,  is  that  no  man  has  yet  discovered  how 
the  non-gregarious  human  being  may,  on  shipboard, 
escape  his  fellow-creatures.  If  you  would  keep  your 
health  and  enjoy  the  real  flavor  of  the  voyage  you 
cannot,  in  the  rumored  habit  of  the  conspicuous 
millionaire,  seclude  yourself  utterly  in  your  cabin. 
To  breathe  over  and  over  again  nothing  but  the  air 
of  one  of  those  throbbing  cells  would  be  but  slightly 
conducive  to  sanity,  to  health  or  to  temper. 

It  is  not  possible,  as  in  the  London  club  of  prop- 
erly conservative  and  insular  flavor,  to  consider  the 
ship  a  place  in  which  you  should  avoid  your  fellow- 
man.  To  hide  behind  a  newspaper  and  keep  your 
hat  on  becomes,  in  the  long  run,  a  trifle  ridiculous, 
especially  when  it  is  obvious  that  it  is  the  newspaper 
of  yesterday  a  week  ago.  It  may  be  objected  that 
such  cynic  curmudgeons  as  find  fault  with  the  people 
whom  an  Atlantic  Liner  thrust  upon  them  do  not 
have  to  go  to  sea  at  all.  Let  them,  say  you,  stay 
at  home,  and  rail  at  the  landscape;  let  them  pout 
over  nature,  or  Fontainebleau,  or  Barbizon,  or 


1 6  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

Lyme,  and  declare  to  the  assembled  winds  that  only 
man  is  vile.  Let  them  confine  to  their  own  gloomy 
chambers  their  constant  repetition  of  the  old  French- 
man's saying  that  the  more  he  saw  of  men  the  better 
he  liked  dogs.  Let  these  non-conformists,  in  short, 
stay  at  home.  .  .  .  But,  alas,  if  they  did  not 
travel  about  the  world  a  little,  the  cynics  and  the 
non-conformists  might  cease  deserving  their  titles; 
it  is  only  as  they  carry  out  into  the  larger  horizons 
their  prejudices  and  objections  that  they  succeed  in 
getting  the  world  at  large  to  confirm  their  pessimism. 
Each  man  carries  with  him  his  own  world;  the  op- 
timist finds  everywhere  some  confirmation  of  his 
dream ;  the  pessimist  some  proof  of  his  fears.  Argu- 
ment, written  or  spoken,  never  has  affected  and 
never  will  affect  persons  of  individual  intelligence; 
we  all  remain,  when  debate  and  dispute  are  done, 
pretty  much  as  we  were  before. 

Since,  then,  there  will  always  be  those  who  find 
fault  with  things  as  they  are,  it  may  be  entertaining 
once  again  to  consider  the  more  or  less  amusing 
ways  in  which  an  average  Atlantic  liner's  company 
of  to-day  contrives  to  start  cynic  observation. 

Whatever  be  the  season  when  we  read  this  page, 
let  us  imagine  ourselves,  for  a  moment,  once  again 
at  that  season  when  the  flood  of  Eastward  travel  is 
at  its  crest.  Once  aboard  the  lugger  are  not  only  all 
the  world  and  his  wife,  but  most  of  the  children. 
The  schools  release  their  young.  The  collegian, 
unripe  still  in  his  own  proper  element,  goes  seeking 
others  across  the  sea.  Above  all,  the  American 
Schoolmaster  is  abroad.  Male  and  female  these 
pour  locustwise  upon  patient  Europe,  contributing  to 


AT    SEA  17 

the  continuing  cynicism  of  our  most  unsocial  travel- 
ers. One  of  these  cynics  remarked,  only  the  other 
day,  that  a  perusal  of  Who's  Who  had  convinced 
him  that  our  continent  was  entirely  populated  by 
authors  and  educators.  Undoubtedly  if  it  were  not 
for  our  ''schoolmasters  abroad,"  it  might  not  be  so 
easy  for  the  itinerant  curmudgeon  to  retain  the  com- 
placent scorn  in  which  he  surveys  mankind. 

YEARS  ago,  before  we  began  to  achieve  a  definite 
system  of  government  tutelage  and  examination  for 
that  service,  it  was  the  American  consul  who  con- 
tributed to  the  average  Atlantic  liner  proof  of  the 
assertion  that  the  United  States  has  a  population  of 
eighty  million  odd — mostly  fools.  If  on  board  ship, 
in  those  earlier  days,  there  was  one  specially  blatant 
idiot,  one  peculiarly  pompous  and  noisy  ass,  it  was 
sure  to  turn  out  that,  as  consul  or  consular  agent,  he 
was  about  to  represent  the  United  States  in  some 
unhappy  European  town.  Many  an  optimist  has 
been  converted  by  these  old-time  consular  emigrants; 
many  a  patriot  has  had  his  confidence  shaken  by 
them.  Plucked  from  some  cosmopolitan  center  like 
Muscatine,  or  Battle  Creek,  these  victors  in  a  politi- 
cal spoils  system  were  cast  blithely  upon  an  aston- 
ished Europe.  Remembering  how  they  impressed 
those  who  suffered  their  presence  on  the  Atlantic, 
one  has  nothing  but  the  grimmest  notions  of  how, 
on  their  European  posts,  they  must  have  upheld  the 
Stars  and  Stripes.  At  the  ship's  concert,  in  the 
course  of  the  inevitable  speeches,  if  one  essentially 
bombastic  bit  of  nonsense  got  itself  unloaded  upon 
the  patient  populace  assembled — assembled  for  rea- 


1 8  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

sons  with  which  being  unwilling  to  swim  the  rest  of 
the  way  had  much  to  do — that  was  sure  to  have 
emanated  from  the  representative  of  our  country. 
If  in  the  smoking-room  one  man  more  than  another 
aired  the  things  that  were  not  so,  it  was  our  consular 
friend.  Ah,  well,  those  days  are  gone ;  all  that  was 
under  the  Consulship  of — our  predecessors;  we 
order  those  things  better  now.  They  tell  us  in 
Washington  that  the  examinations  are  becoming  as 
rigorous  and  exacting  as  those  demanded  by  any 
other  government;  they  say  the  standard  of  intelli- 
gence and  ability  in  our  consular  representatives  is 
now  so  high  that  the  ordinary  exemplar  of  the  old 
regime  would  no  longer  be  able  to  enter  the  fold. 
Well,  so  much  the  better,  and  it  was  high  time.  We 
had  too  long  been,  in  this  respect,  a  laughing  stock 
for  the  others,  a  regret  to  ourselves. 

The  pestiferous  position  so  long  held  by  that  now 
extinct  genus  is  to-day  proudly  upheld  by  the  travel- 
ing teacher.  Lovely,  no  doubt,  in  their  lives;  good 
fathers,  and  mothers,  and  brothers,  and  sisters;  yes, 
yes;  we  make  no  manner  of  doubt  of  that;  and  yet, 
and  yet.  .  .  .  What  was  it  the  brutal  old  bear 
said  when  they  reminded  him  that  a  certain  calami- 
tous minister  led  such  a  beautiful  home  life?  "What 
do  I  care,"  he  growled,  "that  the  man's  good  to  his 
wife,  if  he  lets  England  go  to  the  devil?"  Ay;  and 
even  so ;  these  be,  let  us  never  imagine  otherwise,  the 
most  admirable  specimens  of  domestic  virtue;  but — 
as  exponents  of  our  schoolmastership  they  are  bitter 
pills  for  us  others  to  swallow.  If  one  has  been  upon 
the  Atlantic  ferry  often  enough  to  be  considered 
something  of  a  commuter,  one  will  have  encountered 


AT   SEA  19 

every  variety  of  the  schoolmaster  type,  from  the 
teacher  of  a  district  or  normal  school  in  the  middle 
or  far  West  to  the  principal  of  some  important 
institution  or  the  member  of  this  or  that  Board,  or 
this  or  that  lecture  course. 

Invariably  there  recurs  a  similar  routine  of  experi- 
ence. Our  friend,  the  professor,  approaches  the 
voyage  with  all  the  pomp  and  circumstance  that  he 
is  sure  his  position  entitles  him  to.  Is  there  a  place 
in  the  dining-saloon  more  choice  than  another?  He 
files  his  claim  for  it,  waving  close  to  the  purser's 
nose  his  scholarly  credentials  and  his  whiskers. 
.  .  .  Let  it  be  remarked  that  if  the  London  novel- 
ist, Frank  Richardson,  would  extend  to  our  Ameri- 
can side  his  curious  investigations  in  whiskered 
humanity,  he  would  find  wonderful  material.  .  .  . 
In  every  way  he  begins  his  ship  life  upon  a  large 
scale.  If  he  figures  you  as  being  in  the  least  able  to 
lisp  the  intellectual  alphabet,  he  may  condescend  to 
you;  but  not  otherwise.  He  is  an  adept  at  the  pump. 
He  asks  you,  succinctly,  your  intentions,  not  only  on 
this  particular  voyage,  but  in  life  as  a  whole.  He  is 
not  infrequently  something  of  an  amateur  hypnotist; 
that,  at  least,  would  be  a  charitable  interpretation. 
He  fixes  all  the  women  with  his  whiskered  eyes:  he 
stands  before  them,  as  who  should  say:  "Were  you 
wishful  to  address  my  Majesty?"  If  he  learns  that 
you  live  in  Timbuctoo,  he  will  ask  you  if  you  know 
the  particular  potentate  there,  who  is  his  very  dear 
friend.  If  you  have  been  in  Oulang-Ylang,  he  as- 
sures you  that  our  ambassador  there  is  his  old  college 
chum.  To  all  of  which,  if  you  are  polite,  you  make 
but  slight  reply,  and  content  yourself  with  wonder- 


20  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

ing.  For,  as  the  voyage  waxes  and  wanes,  the  empti- 
ness behind  the  whiskers  is  daily  more  clearly  discov- 
ered. The  man  is  no  longer  on  a  rostrum;  he  no 
longer  has  before  him  a  crew  of  timid  infants,  inca- 
pable of  answering  or  argument;  he  is  in  a  section  of 
Cosmopolis,  and  he  grows  daily  smaller  in  that  con- 
tact. Pompous  statements  of  the  things  that  are  not 
do  not  now  serve  his  purpose;  here  or  there,  in 
smoking-room  or  at  table,  he  is  sure,  sooner  or  later, 
to  meet  a  person  of  real  information;  before  the  end 
of  the  trip  he  is  despoiled  of  all  the  rumor  of  intelli- 
gence that  he  brought  on  board  with  him.  For  that 
is  eternally  the  revelation  in  these  cases  of  the  school- 
master abroad;  their  so-called  learning  does  not 
stand  the  test  of  human  and  experienced  contact. 
They  are  teachers  who  have  not  in  themselves  the 
stuff  for  teaching.  They  are  loaded  with  sham  in- 
formation, bulging  with  bombastic  superficialities. 
From  a  platform  they  doubtless  impose ;  they  cannot 
impose  upon  any  aggregation  of  adult  travelers  who 
know  the  world  they  live  in. 

This  is  not  to  imply  that  all  our  teaching  is  done 
by  such  as  these.  It  is  simply  the  experience  of 
somewhat  cynic  observation.  Doubtless,  as  in  every 
other  human  circumstance,  it  is,  aboard  ship,  only 
the  counterfeits  who  blazon  themselves.  Certainly 
the  fact  remains  that  the  conspicuous  types  of  travel- 
ing teachers  leaving  our  shores  for  the  improvement 
of  Europe  and  their  own  minds,  are  persons  who 
enable  us  easily  to  solve  the  puzzle  of  why  so  many 
of  our  American  children,  massively  crammed  with 
Isms  and  Ologies,  remain  painfully  ignorant  of  the 
rudiments  of  good  English. 


AT    SEA  21 

If  by  any  chance  one  has  derived  from  fiction,  or 
any  other  optimistic  rainbow,  the  notion  that  these 
teachers  of  men  must  be  themselves  men  of  pro- 
found thought,  of  originality,  well — all  you  have  to 
do  is  to  listen  to  our  friend,  the  professor.  Listen, 
just  listen,  and  you  will  hear  the  novel  twist  of 
phrase,  the  individual  tone  of  thought,  distilled  from 
beyond  his  whiskers.  Thus,  on  the  second  day  or 
so:  "Well,  we  are  making  progress."  On  the  third 
or  fourth  day  it  is:  "Still  getting  on."  To  all  he 
hands  out  these  noble  soporific  speeches,  until  you 
wish  that  Martin  Tupper  were  not  dead,  and,  listen- 
ing, might  kill  this  other  man  from  sheer  envy.  You 
realize,  if  never  before,  that  to  many  people  speech 
is  given  to  prove  the  absence  of  thought. 

Do  not  think,  however,  that  it  is  possible  to  dis- 
courage our  friend,  the  professor.  You  may  resent 
his  constant  application  of  the  pump,  and  when  he 
asks  you  if  you  know  the  great  Soandso,  retort  that 
you  know  Nobody;  when  he  enlarges  upon  his  value 
as  an  item  in  the  great  work  of  Education,  you  may 
retort  that  you  are  with  George  Moore  and  consider 
education  a  curse;  nothing  you  can  say,  no  rudeness 
you  may  pretend,  or  pose  you  may  adopt,  will  touch 
the  man  behind  the  whiskers;  he  is  safe  in  his  com- 
placency and  the  adulation  of  the  women  who  adore 
him.  For  that  is  a  strange  detail;  these  whiskered 
professors  always  have  about  them  a  train  of  female 
satellites.  From  near  or  far  they  worship.  Whether 
it  be  the  hypnotic  eye,  the  massive  dome,  represent- 
ing but  not  exposing  thought,  or  the  egregious  whis- 
kers, or  the  pompously  orated  assertion  that  it  is 
"another  fine  day  we  are  having" — who  can  tell? 


22  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

but  the  fact  remains  that  many  ladies  of  quite  certain 
age  do  hang  upon  his  words,  and  would  doubtless  be 
glad  to  do  the  same  upon  his  whiskers.  So,  after  all, 
though  the  rest  of  the  ship's  company  may,  by  the 
last  day,  have  committed  the  great  crime  of  finding 
him  out,  some  of  the  dowager  duchesses  still  remain 
the  professor's  devout  adherents.  So  we  leave  him, 
his  vanity  momentarily  recovering  from  the  ship's 
laughter,  preparing  to  unloose  upon  poor  Europe 
the  wind  of  his  rhetoric  and  the  flutter  of  his  whis- 
kers. Europe  sees  these  professors  in  its  galleries, 
and  proceeding  like  hirsute  comets  over  all  the 
heavens  that  Baedeker  has  starred;  it  sees  them  and 
it  does  not  whimper;  Europe  is  a  patient  land.  Yet, 
in  its  sleeve,  no  doubt,  Europe  has  her  laughter;  she 
only  needs  to  see  these  professorial  types  for  some 
few  weeks  each  year;  she  knows  we  in  America  must 
suffer  them  for  months;  we  and  our  children.  And 
so  that  wise  old  mother,  Europe,  smiles  her  smile. 

OFTEN  as  it  may  have  been  pointed  out,  it  remains 
unanswerably  true  that  there  is  no  place  in  all  the 
world  where  human  characteristics  so  come  to  light 
and  so  tend  to  the  irritation  of  the  others,  as  aboard 
ship  at  sea.  Under  almost  any  other  circumstances 
you  can,  be  you  so  inclined,  avoid  your  fellows.  We 
know  that  it  is  possible  to  be  exceedingly  alone  in  a 
crowd.  You  may  walk  Broadway  or  the  Avenue, 
Bond  street  or  Piccadilly,  as  introspectively  absorbed 
as  if  you  were  in  your  own  study,  your  own  office,  or 
on  a  mountain  top.  Even  in  a  huge  summer  hotel, 
typical  of  human  hives,  you  can  escape  this  way  or 
that;  you  can  take  a  walk;  you  can  shut  yourself  in 


AT    SEA  23 

your  room;  you  can  take  a  swim  or  a  sail.  Nothing 
of  all  this  is  possible  aboard  ship.  For  the  period 
of  your  voyage  you  are  hopelessly  cooped  up  with 
this  company.  If  the  company  is  not  to  your  liking, 
you  are  in  sad  case.  You  cannot  stick  in  your  cabin, 
if  you  are  but  common  mortal,  to  whom  palatial 
suites  and  magnificent  spaces  are  denied;  the  moment 
you  go  about  the  deck  you  are  at  the  mercy  of  your 
companions.  If  you  make  intimacies,  they  are  likely 
to  reach  conclusions  much  more  quickly  than  on  land; 
and  if  you  discover  aversions  they  will  be  more  keen 
and  bitter  than  elsewhere  in  the  world.  The  ship 
tends  to  an  exaggeration  of  every  quality  that  is  in 
us.  Our  virtues  and  our  pettiness  are  discovered 
more  sharply  and  more  quickly  than  elsewhere. 
Boredom  and  the  eternal,  inescapable  round  of  the 
same  faces,  stir  to  unimagined  venom  the  most 
mildly  mannered  of  us  who  go  down  to  the  sea  in 
ships.  Always  these  same  people  at  table,  always 
the  same  insensate  stereotyped  phrases  every  morn- 
ing and  noon  and  night;  what  a  frightful,  tedious 
round,  says  the  cynic.  He  finds  relief,  if  at  all,  only 
in  the  constant,  silent,  secret  study  of  the  types  be- 
fore him.  The  others  are  all  bent  upon  the  conquest 
of  more  knowledge,  more  culture,  on  those  Euro- 
pean shores;  he  is  content  with  studying  his  traveling 
fellow-man. 

No  matter  how  grim  may  be  one's  cynicism,  one 
can  surely  never  watch,  the  first  day  out,  that  strug- 
gle for  dining  places,  without  some  stir  of  pity  for 
the  particular  steward  who  has  the  arrangement  in 
hand.  The  traveling  theosophists,  the  Fletcherites 
and  the  Christian  Scientists  surround  him  as  by  a 


24  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

hedge;  each  wants  something  that  is  quite  impossible, 
and  he  has  to  pretend  that  all  who  clamor  will  get 
absolutely  the  most  desirable  places  in  the  saloon. 
The  amalgamated  society  of  dowager  duchesses  as- 
sures him  that  they  must  have  a  table  for  twelve 
together  in  this  corner;  the  professor  and  his  satel- 
lites must  face  north;  the  fashionable  colony  must  be 
secluded  in  this  corner  here,  and  the  jovial  youths 
just  out  of  college  must  be  put  together  over  there. 
This  woman  says  she  couldn't  think  of  sitting  there, 
and  that  one  vows  she  will  never  be  able  to  eat  a 
single  meal  if  she  does  not  instantly  get  a  place  which 
has  long  ago  been  allotted  to  another. 

And  always  there  is  the  voice  which  rises  sharply 
above  the  clamor:  "I  never  was  on  a  boat  yet  that  I 
didn't  sit  at  the  Captain's  table."  You  gaze  in  awe 
at  the  speaker,  and  behold  a  frowzy  duchess — the 
term  is  a  phrase  with  me,  as  the  word  "ladies"  is  in 
the  opera  by  Lehar — and  you  instantly  feel  a  surge 
of  sympathy  for  the  noble  army  of  Atlantic  skippers. 
What  weather  they  survive,  and,  aye,  what  women ! 
On  one  ship,  I  recall,  great  scandal  was  caused 
toward  the  end  of  the  trip,  by  the  rumor  of  a  certain 
remark  from  the  captain.  The  poor  man  had  no 
doubt  been  badgered  beyond  his  endurance;  he  was, 
at  best,  not  a  convivial  soul;  at  any  rate,  it  was  re- 
ported that  he  would  sooner  fry  in  Hades  than  be 
married  to  an  American  woman.  Poor  man;  he  had, 
doubtless,  that  very  day,  been  held  up,  for  pumping 
purposes,  by  some  peculiarly  leech-like  pest.  Never, 
until  you  become  an  Atlantic  commuter,  will  you 
realize  the  depths  of  imbecility  to  which  apparently 
sensible  people  can  fall  in  the  way  of  asking  ques- 


AT    SEA  25 

tions  at  sea.  Invariably,  too,  they  choose  the  captain 
as  victim. 

Imagine  the  captain,  sitting  in  the  place  of  author- 
ity in  the  dining  saloon.  Absorbing  food,  and  lend- 
ing an  unwilling,  ruddy  ear.  Into  that  ear,  pickled 
by  the  Atlantic  breezes,  wafts  the  pick  of  seagoing 
conversation. 

You  are  to  imagine  him  being  asked  these  ques- 
tions on  the  eastbound  trip : 

"Do  you  think  we  will  have  any  difficulty  getting 
rooms?" 

"Would  it  be  all  right  to  wear  a  biscuit  colored 
chiffon  at  Ascot?" 

"Does  this  boat  belong  to  the  Corn-bine,  or  has  it 
got  reciprocating  screws?" 

"Can  you  arrange  to  let  us  see  an  iceberg?" 

"What  made  the  purser  look  so  vexed  when  I 
asked  him  if  my  Pom  Pom  couldn't  have  chicken 
livers  every  day  for  lunch?" 

"Can  you  manage  not  to  land  on  Friday?  But  I 
suppose  you're  not  superstitious,  having  so  much  to 
do  with  compasses,  and  foc'sles  and  things?" 

Or  these,  westward  ho : 

"Don't  suppose  you  can  tell  me  of  any  good  wapiti 
shooting  over  there,  what?" 

"You  see  a  lot  of  these  American  political  beggars 
on  these  hookers,  I  suppose,  eh?  Lloyd-George  sort, 
most  of  'em,  ain't  they?" 

"Man  told  me  he  had  to  be  personally  present 
while  his  boots  were  being  blacked  in  New  York. 
D'you  vouch  for  it?  Pulling  my  leg,  wasn't  he?" 

"Why  do  Americans  drink  so  much  of  that  Polish 
water  or  whatever  it  is?" 


26  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

"Has  anyone  ever  thought  of  applying  the  vacuum 
cleaning  principle  to  a  fog?" 

You  are  to  imagine,  I  say,  the  captain's  ruddy 
countenance,  battered  by  the  fury  of  a  hundred  tem- 
pests, stained  by  a  thousand  suns  and  furrowed  by 
the  salty  sprays  of  countless  billows,  keeping  grimly 
polite. 

Then,  finally,  you  are  to  imagine  what,  once  safe 
on  the  bridge,  he  says  to  the  wild  waves. 

I  leave  you  imagining.  Imagining,  too,  that  you 
have  finally  discovered  where  the  gales,  the  bliz- 
zards and  all  the  other  disastrous  things  that  sweep 
the  seven  seas,  originate,  and  why. 

I  leave  you  imagining. 

It  becomes  evident  as  one  listens  to  the  inane 
questions  asked  aboard  even  the  most  fashionable 
liner,  by  the  most  sane-seeming  people,  that  there  is 
something  about  the  awful  monotony  of  life  on 
board  ship  which  utterly  deadens  what  in  most  peo- 
ple passes  for  intelligence.  An  essay  might,  indeed, 
easily  be  written,  based  upon  such  sea-going  observa- 
tion, proving  that  only  about  one  person  in  a  thou- 
sand knows  enough  to  keep  his  or  her  mouth  shut 
when  there  is  nothing  to  say.  Life  at  sea  tends,  in 
short,  to  bring  about  a  condition  bordering  on  idiocy. 
That,  at  any  rate,  is  the  conclusion  reached  by  the 
cynic  philosopher  who  listens  too  attentively  to  the 
prevailing  conversations.  The  rare  disclosure  of 
original  thought — well,  it  is  so  rare  that  one  is 
minded  to  frame  it  permanently  in  one's  gallery  of 
Dodos  I  Have  Met.  Too  few  of  us  can  say,  step- 
ping ashore  from  one  of  these  sea-going  hotels:  At 


AT    SEA  27 

least,  I  met  One  White  Man !    or :   There  was  One 
aboard  who  Spoke  the  Tongue. 

ONE  of  the  newer  features  of  the  salt  water  com- 
muters to-day  is  the  Great  Novelist  correcting  his 
proofs.  Never  a  ship  sails  now  but  what  there  is  an 
inkslinger  or  two  on  board;  the  breed  is  as  impos- 
sible to  escape  at  sea  as  on  land.  We  know  these 
many  years  past  that  it  is  no  longer  possible  to  throw 
a  stone  from  any  tenement  window  or  mountain  top 
in  all  America  without  hitting  a  novelist;  one  is  safe 
from  them  nowhere.  They  are  threatening  to  be- 
come worse  than  rabbits  in  Australia.  Now  that 
plague  has  reached  the  sea.  They  do  not,  these 
novelists,  long  let  concealment,  like  a  worm  i'  the 
bud,  feed  on  their  cheek;  no,  no,  they  soon  sit  obvi- 
ously behind  a  fountain  pen,  correcting  proofs  that 
all  men  may  behold  and  marvel.  The  loud  whisper 
rises  among  the  dowager  duchesses  and  the  various 
'Ists  from  Boston  and  the  other  parishes  in  Puri- 
tania :  Did  you  know  we  had  a  Novelist  among  us? 
There,  to-wit,  he  sits;  magnificent  amid  the  frag- 
ments of  the  new  novel,  serene  amid  his  family,  set 
high  above  his  fellow-voyagers.  The  unsophisti- 
cated observe  his  magnificence,  the  fashionable  attire 
of  his  family,  his  servants,  and  they  aver  that  litera- 
ture must  indeed  be  a  most  paying  thing.  They  do 
not  know,  alas,  that  our  traveling  novelist,  as  often 
as  not,  has  made  his  money  from  a  soap,  or  a  patent, 
or  a  parent,  and  is  writing  novels  simply  as  an  exer- 
cise in  vanity.  If  you  listen  long  enough  to  the  great 
man  buried  under  proof-sheets,  you  will  learn  little 
more  of  wisdom  than  from  the  professor  of  the 


28  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

whiskers  or  from  the  women  who  ask  the  skipper 
foolish  questions;  and  you  will  realize  that  our  poor 
literature  is  by  now  become  a  mead  which  any  fool 
may  enter  and  the  gate  to  which  no  honest  cudgel 
guards.  Never  mind;  you  cannot  fluster  the  com- 
placency of  the  great  Novelist.  It  is  for  these  mo- 
ments that  he  has  started  forth  upon  his  travels;  to 
be  whispered  of  everywhere  as  the  great  Man  of  Let- 
ters. Obscure  at  home,  perhaps,  but  voyaging 
among  people  who  take  him  at  his  own  valuation,  he 
is  sure  of  just  the  recognition  that  he  most  desires. 
Surely,  too,  he  adds  to  the  human  interest  of  the 
ship.  People  like  to  think  they  traveled  with  a 
Great  Light  of  literature.  Sometimes  he  is  a  play- 
wright, hurrying  a  new  play  to  its  conclusion  while 
the  ship  makes  for  port.  No  matter,  whatever  sort 
of  slave  to  pen  and  ink  he  is,  you  are  sure  to  find 
him ;  no  well  behaved  ship  today  sails  without  him. 

A  valuable  suggestion  might  be  made  to  such  nov- 
elists as  live  today,  not  so  much  upon  beef  and  vege- 
tables, as  on  adulation.  Let  them  live  altogether 
upon  liners !  Let  them  float  ever  from  one  ship  to  an- 
other. Every  week  a  new  audience  of  persons  who, 
knowing  nothing  much  of  literature  themselves,  are 
willing  to  take  the  Great  Novelist's  estimate  of  her 
or  himself.  Think,  too,  of  the  novelty  of  the  press 
paragraphs  possible:  "Richard  Roomers,  the  well- 
known  author  of  'The  Older  Crowd/  has  given  up 
his  cottage  at  Sandylands  and  is  a  permanent  resi- 
dent of  the  S.  S.  Asthmatic.  .  .  ."  Isn't  there  a 
properly  romantic  ring  about  that?  I  commend  the 
notion,  not  only  to  publishers,  and  to  their  pet  novel- 
ists, but  also  to  the  steamship  companies.  From  re- 


AT   SEA  29 

cent  observation  one  must  think  that  a  regularly  em- 
ployed Man  of  Letters  would  be  a  profitable  addition 
to  every  self-respecting  liner.  They  have  grill- 
rooms, Turkish  baths,  gymnasiums,  stenographers, 
barbers — why  not  a  Ship's  Novelist?  As  a  line  to 
be  cried  loud  in  the  advertisements,  has  not  this  some 
value :  The  S.  S.  Insomnia  carries  a  Splits  Restau- 
rant, an  elevator  and  a  Popular  Novelist. 

Even  such  a  detail  as  this  is  a  sign  of  the  times. 
Once  we  had  to  listen  to  the  question:  Who  reads 
an  American  book?  Today  you  can  find  no  liner  on 
the  Atlantic  aboard  which  a  patently  prosperous  nov- 
elist is  not  sitting,  correcting  his  proofs  and  curbing, 
as  much  as  is  polite,  the  adulation  of  innumerable 
dowager  duchesses.  Years  ago  one  of  the  points  of 
interest  was  to  note  what  were  the  books  that  sea- 
goers  read;  to-day  the  observer  can  be  kept  equally 
busy  noting  what  sort  of  books  people  write  at  sea. 
From  the  sternly  cynic  point  of  view,  too,  the  discov- 
ery of  the  prevalence  of  novel-writing  at  sea  explains 
much  that,  in  the  literature  we  read  on  land,  had 
hitherto  been  matter  for  wonder.  You  may  have 
heard  of  the  woman  who  always  looks  as  if  she  had 
dressed  at  an  alarm  of  fire.  Much  of  our  current 
literature  is,  I  am  sure,  written  at  sea. 

NOR  is  the  snob  to  be  forgotten.  Rich  or  poor, 
he  is  always  with  us.  Let  us,  for  easy  generalization, 
employ  the  masculine  gender.  Let  us  be  polite, 
whether  truthful  or  not;  truth  might  show  the  snob 
as  often  a  she  as  a  he.  The  snob  on  land  can  be 
escaped.  When  he  lifts  his  voice  in  the  parlor  car, 
or  the  palm  room,  or  the  street,  or  the  box  at  the 


30  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

Opera,  there  is  nothing  to  prevent  your  getting  up 
and  going  away;  at  the  worst  it  is  only  a  matter  of 
hours  that  you  must  suffer.  But  at  sea  !  Ah !  there 
he  has  you  at  his  mercy. 

There  are  many  varieties  of  the  seagoing  snob. 
There  are  those  who  never  let  you  forget  they  have 
a  motorcar,  and  that  they  are  "going  to  do"  Italy  or 
Egypt,  or  some  other  innocent  land;  they  seem  to 
know  about  their  travels  very  little,  save  that  "we 
did  30,000  miles  last  year,  and  it  only  cost  us — ," 
and  then  they  mention  a  sum  with  which  you  are 
quite  sure  you  could  be  happy  for  the  rest  of  your 
life. 

The  subject  of  money  having  once  been  started, 
you  hear  and  feel  and  smell  nothing  else  for  a  long 
time;  the  scent  of  the  dollar  is  even  stronger  than  of 
smoke  in  the  smoking  room  or  of  the  salt  on  deck; 
you  wonder  why  these  people  do  not  stay  at  home 
if  they  are  going  to  take  their  dollar  talk  with  them 
wherever  they  go.  At  such  moments  you  know  per- 
fectly why  you  are  going  eastward  yourself;  it  is  not 
because  you  seek  summer;  it  is  not  because  you  need 
holiday,  or  that  you  have  been  ill;  it  is  simply  that 
you  are  trying  to  escape  the  talk  of  money.  Cooped 
up  there  on  board  the  mid-Atlantic  liner,  with  these 
people  who  talk  of  money,  money,  money,  you  won- 
der why  blind  fate  has  arranged  it  so  that  the  people 
who  seem  to  have  the  most  money  are  also  the  people 
who  make  it  an  offense  to  the  nostrils  of  others. 

Among  the  recurring  events  in  any  season  is  the 
announcement  that  such  and  such  a  boat  bound  for 
such  and  such  a  port — one  day  it  is  the  Insomnia,  the 
next  week  it  is  the  Asthmatic,  and  another  time  it  is 


AT    SEA  31 

the  King  John — has  on  board  the  representatives  of 
more  American  wealth  than  any  steamer  that  ever 
left  port.  This  delicate  little  invitation  to  the  snob, 
as  well  as  to  the  seagoing  gambler,  occurs  as  regu- 
larly as  the  change  of  the  moon. 

If  it  is  on  one  of  these  boats  that  you  travel,  from 
the  standpoint  of  fashion,  you  may  be  said  to  have 
chosen  wisely.  Here  are  representatives  of  the  Most 
Dollars — beg  pardon,  the  First  Families — in  Amer- 
ica. Here  are  notables  galore.  There  is  sure  to  be 
a  Count  or  two,  probably  Hungarians  or  Italians 
from  embassies  at  Washington,  going  back  to  castles 
whose  furniture  is  mostly  consonants.  An  English 
peer,  perhaps,  is  in  the  mob  somewhere,  and  one  of 
the  many  American  girls  who  married  a  title.  Mil- 
lionaires abound,  and  the  Catholic  clergy  is  always 
well  represented  on  these  boats.  The  priests  are 
going  to  deliver  to  the  Church  its  treasures,  while 
the  millionaires  are  going  to  try  to  bribe  the  Church 
into  selling  its  artistic  treasures.  All  the  world  goes 
to  Italy,  in  motors  or  in  monkish  cowl,  to  sit  in  the 
sunshine  and  brag  of  how  much  the  sunshine  is  cost- 
ing, or  to  scurry  through  the  Florentine  jewelry 
shops  so  that  friends  may  later  be  impressed  with  the 
cheapness  of  the  purchases — all  the  world  goes  to 
Italy. 

There  are  those  whose  sole  hope  seems  to  be  to 
reach  Monte  Carlo  and  all  the  other  places  where  the 
life  of  conspicuous  bounderdom  differs  not  at  all  from 
what  it  is  in  any  other  of  its  haunts.  These  mostly 
have  motors;  they  vow  it  is  the  only  way  to  see  the 
country;  but  don't,  if  you  love  seriousness,  ask  them 
too  closely  what  they  have  really  seen  in  those  other 


32  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

trips  of  theirs;  the  answer  is  always  that  refrain, 
"We  made  steen  thousand  miles."  Then  there  are 
the  people  who  sit  about  the  deck  reading  Loti  or 
Hichens.  They  are  going  to  Biskra;  you  know  it 
even  before  they  tell  you  so.  Instead  of  motorcars, 
some  of  the  Egyptians  have  a  dahabia  of  their  own. 
If  you  have  been  so  bewildered  by  the  varieties  of 
tall  talk  on  board  that  you  confuse  diabetes  with  the 
houseboat  on  the  Nile,  the  thing  for  you  to  do  is  sim- 
ply to  keep  still.  Keep  still  and  listen  to  others,  and 
you  will  learn  much  on  these  boats. 

A  CHAPTER  has  long  itched  to  be  written  about 
English  as  spoken  in  places  where  our  fashionables 
and  semi-fashionables  most  congregate.  Perhaps  it 
is  the  semis  who  do  the  mischief;  that,  for  the  sake  of 
the  real  article  of  American  breeding,  is  distinctly  to 
be  hoped.  For  breeding,  that  is  just  what  is  so  lack- 
ing in  the  speech  you  may  overhear  on  board  our  par- 
lor cars,  our  millionaire  steamers  in  midwinter,  and 
the  like.  An  Englishman  hearing  this  speech  would 
wonder  what  strange  mongrel  form  of  talk  was  this; 
a  Western  American  would  stand  agape.  It  has 
always  been  a  passion  with  the  more  restless  in  any 
society  to  take  liberties  with  speech,  but  there  has 
never  been  such  awful  stuff  spoken  as  by  our  most 
conspicuous  people.  They  distort  vowels,  they  mis- 
place accents  that  they  imagine  as  English,  and  they 
behave  generally  in  a  way  that  almost  makes  one 
prefer  the  Western  schoolma'am  who  pronounces 
the  language  as  if  she  had  just  learned  it. 

In  this  strange  parentless  speech,  then,  the  snob 
assails  your  ears  as  you  proceed  into  summer  seas. 


AT    SEA  33 

He  talks  of  motor  cars,  and  dahabias,  and  the  hotels 
of  Syracuse  and  Sorrento;  but,  if  you  are  wise,  you 
will  not  let  him  disturb  you,  for — unless  you  have 
rare  bad  luck  in  weather — you  can  always  escape  out 
on  to  the  boat  deck  and  there  lie  stretched  in  the  sun 
as  it  grows  daily  more  scorching,  until  at  the  end  of 
a  dozen  days  you  have  a  tanned  hide  so  thick  that 
not  even  the  snob  and  his  snobberies  can  penetrate  it. 

Yes,  on  most  of  those  boats  there  is  always  that 
glorious  boat  deck.  If  you  have  been  ill,  and  are 
seeking  simply  peace  and  sunshine,  there  is  no  better 
thing  in  all  the  world  to  do  than  lie  there  and  bask. 
Let  the  others  come  and  wonder;  never  mind;  the 
thing  to  do  is  to  bask.  "I  simply  don't  see  how  you 
can  stand  the  glare!"  says  your  most  intimate  steam- 
ship acquaintance,  but  you  wave  him  away  and  con- 
tinue letting  the  sun  do  its  fine  work  of  killing  all  the 
germs  you  have.  You  may  have  left  icicles  hanging 
from  the  pier  in  the  North  River,  but  at  Gibraltar 
you  are  going  to  need  your  Panama,  and  for  that 
Panama  you  need  an  appropriate  tan;  so  you  lie  there 
basking. 

Some  of  the  millionaires  leave  you  when  Gibraltar 
is  touched.  Madeira  and  the  Azores  were  well 
enough;  the  funny  little  white  villages  and  farms  of 
the  Azores  were  gaudy  like  so  many  toy  towns,  and 
you  recall  the  names  of  Pico  and  Ponta  Delgada  with 
a  certain  relish.  But  you  have  no  happy  memories 
of  a  millionaire  or  two  the  less  at  those  places;  no, 
that  only  begins  at  Gibraltar.  There  you  lose  the 
splendid  folk  who  are  to  "do"  Spain.  Spain,  you  see, 
can  be  "done"  nowadays  "between  steamers,"  as  the 
phrase  is.  Your  ticket  allows  of  your  leaving  your 


34  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

steamer  at  Gibraltar,  and  staying  there,  or  in  Spain, 
across  the  neck  of  land,  and  continuing  your  voyage 
on  the  next  eastbound  steamer.  So  if  you  are  a  mil- 
lionaire with  new  regions  to  conquer  by  motor,  or 
if  your  daughter  has  a  fancy  to  learn  Spanish  or  a 
few  Spanish  fandangoes,  off  you  go  at  Gibraltar. 

In  any  event,  you  will  probably  go  off  at  Gibraltar 
for  those  hours  allowed  you  while  the  ship  takes  on 
fresh  provisions.  It  is  a  brief  routine,  but  always 
pleasant.  Your  first  time  you  will  doubtless  pay  the 
price  of  folly  and  let  a  robber  disguised  in  the  fa- 
miliar livery  of  cabman  drive  you  to  the  Alameda 
Gardens,  past  some  of  the  fortifications,  and  even  to 
Spanishtown ;  the  entire  distance  is  only  a  few  blocks 
and  can  be  easily  walked.  If  you  are  of  the  shopping 
sex,  you  will  look  for  spangled  veils  and  Moorish 
brocades,  and  when  you  return  to  the  ship  you  will 
have  grievous  moments  wondering  if  you  were 
cheated  or  not,  or  if  the  peddler  who  came  aboard 
the  steamer  sold  his  wares  more  cheaply  than  the 
merchant  in  Gibraltar.  You  will  see  the  oranges  in 
the  gardens,  and  the  flowers  over  the  soldiers'  graves, 
and  the  officers  swaggering  and  riding,  and  the  mel- 
ancholy, sombre-eyed  Moors,  who  even  in  their  guise 
as  marketmen  maintain  their  dignity,  and  the  views 
aloft  through  quaint  alleys  as  charming  as  aught  in 
Genoa  itself. 

The  lessening  of  numbers  begins  with  Gibraltar 
and  increases  with  every  stop.  In  Naples  some  of 
the  millionaires  have  their  motor  cars  waiting; 
others  are  for  Palermo ;  some  for  Fiume,  having  just 
heard  of  the  Dalmatian  riviera ;  others  are  still  wav- 
ing dahabias  in  our  awed  faces.  One  by  one  you  will 


AT    SEA  35 

lose  sight  of  them  for  the  time  being.  Soon  it  will 
be  in  all  the  cables  that  the  Popular  Novelist  is  tour- 
ing through  Touraine,  or  some  other  unhappy  ghost- 
land,  in  his  Odol  car,  and  soon  the  Professor  will  be 
insufficiently  buried  in  Pompeii,  and  the  dowager 
duchesses  will  be  being  presented  to  the  Pope.  The 
usual  strangers,  who  have  not  been  seen  through  the 
whole  voyage,  arrive  from  secret  holes,  and  show 
themselves  stealthily  or  gorgeously  on  the  last  day. 
The  usual  pretended  intimacies  die  and  the  usual 
brave  hopes  of  subsequent  meetings  flourish.  uBe 
sure  to  come  and  see  me  when  you  get  back;  second 
house  to  the  left  between  New  York  and  Boston!" — 
some  of  the  sentences  are  as  absurd  as  that.  Every- 
one is  so  glad  to  have  met  everyone  else.  The  candid 
friend,  with  courage  to  admit  that  he  or  she  is 
heartily  glad  to  get  rid  of  the  whole  tribe,  either  does 
not  exist  or  cannot  find  the  courage.  Once  dumped 
upon  the  dock,  once  in  the  port,  the  company  scat- 
ters; yet  some  linger  a  little — linger  and  wonder. 
They  see  strange  couples  newly  assorted;  they  watch 
the  beginnings  of  this  comedy  and  the  end  of  that, 
and  they  wonder — they  mightily  wonder. 

The  snobs  who  have  told  you  all  the  way  over  that 
they  are  going  to  a  "dear  little  place  called  Alassio, 
where,  they  say,  there  are  no  Americans  at  all,  only 
the  nicest  English  people,"  you  will  lose  these;  and 
you  will  also  lose  the  magnates  from  the  Western 
town  who  told  you  that  "that  awful  creature  over 
there  in  the  fur  coat  has  been  speaking  to  us  just  be- 
cause he's  from  Detroit,  the  same  as  we  are.  Of 
course,  in  Detroit  we  simply  wouldn't  think  of  no- 
ticing him." 


36  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

As  FOR  the  determined  slaves  of  fashion,  they  take 
mostly  to  an  identical  trip  northward.  The  routes 
vary,  to  be  sure,  but  they  run  together  at  one  point 
or  another.  Some  go  straight  up  via  Capri,  Sor- 
rento, Rome,  and  Florence;  you  see  them  again  in 
the  Uffizi  or  in  St.  Peter's;  some  go  to  Venice,  and 
there  are  also  the  bold  ones  who  make  for  Vienna  in 
order  that  they  may  come  home  and  tell  you  that  they 
heard  "Count  of  Luxembourg"  or  "The  Brave  Sol- 
dier" two  years  before  America  even  heard  of  it. 
There  is  great  satisfaction  in  that  being  beforehand 
about  the  art  matters  of  Europe,  and  some  of  our 
fashionables  begin  to  realize  it;  still,  for  the  most 
part,  the  people  wise  enough  to  be  pioneers  of  that 
sort  are  rich  in  other  ways  than  money  or  fashion. 
Some  find  one  another  again  in  Nice,  some  in  Lu- 
cerne, and  by  Easter  they  all  try  to  reach  Paris. 
There  are,  you  see,  certain  social  festivals  which  the 
real  devotees  try  to  attend.  Rome  has  its  social  sea- 
son, Florence  is  still  for  a  certain  set  the  first  of  all 
winter  cities,  as  Ouida  called  it;  and  the  people  who 
know  their  way  about  try  to  reach  Paris  before  the 
summer  warmth  begins  to  fill  it  with  the  type  of 
Americans  who  are  halted  in  front  of  Cook's  atop 
of  a  char-a-banc.  A  little  later  comes  the  opening 
of  the  London  season,  and  the  fashionable  northing 
has  been  completed. 

A  great  cure-all  is  this  cruise,  and  yet  there  are 
some  who  find  no  comfort  even  in  this  cure.  In  Sor- 
rento, one  month  of  March,  there  was  a  blithe  spirit 
in  the  Vittoria  who  was  perhaps  the  most  typical 
instance  of  the  nerve-ridden  American  who  is  utterly 
incurable.  He  had  a  lovely  mode  of  accosting  you. 


AT    SEA  37 

uAh,"  said  he,  meeting  you  in  the  hotel  corridor 
after  dinner,  "American,  I  see!  I'm  from  Minneap- 
olis; I'm  in  the  lumber  business.  What's  your  busi- 
ness?" All  in  a  breath,  quick  as  lightning,  and  all 
with  a  smile;  and  only  an  Englishman  could  have  had 
the  heart  not  to  meet  him  as  smilingly  as  possible.  In 
a  few  moments  he  had  given  you  a  sketch  of  his  life, 
of  the  state  of  his  nerves,  and  had  passed  on. 

Weeks  later  you  might  be  sitting  in  a  cafe  in  Flor- 
ence, reading  an  English  paper.  Suddenly  a  voice 
would  begin  behind  you,  quickly,  and  in  the  same  old 
formula:  "Ah,  American,  I  see;  my  name's  Jones, 
and  I'm  from  Minneapolis,"  and  when  you  turned 
around  the  same  face  from  Sorrento  was  there,  and 
only  was  taken  aback  for  the  shortest  of  moments. 
Later  you  met  him  in  the  Haymarket  in  London. 
Later  still,  safely  homebound  on  a  steamer  that  you 
had  entered  at  Southampton,  you  might  be  thinking 
of  the  curious  meetings  of  travel,  when,  the  morning 
after  touching  at  Queenstown,  who  should  appear  but 
Jones  from  Minneapolis!  He  had  just  been  visiting 
Mr.  Croker,  and  his  nerves  were  not  much  better. 
Months  still  later  a  motor  car  in  a  New  England 
village  nearly  runs  you  down,  and  you  see  a  flag 
bearing  this  device,  "We  are  from  Minneapolis," 
and  there  sits  Jones  again.  More  months  go  by,  and 
you  pick  up  the  paper  and  see  that  Jones,  who  has 
just  completed  so  many  thousand  miles  in  a  motor- 
car, has  taken  to  ballooning.  And  so  on  goes  Jones, 
who  is  a  victim  of  nerves  and  cannot  stay  still,  though 
he  die  of  his  restlessness.  For  Jones,  then,  such  a 
voyage,  afloat  and  ashore,  is  but  one  lap  in  a  long 
struggle  against  tedium. 


38  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

You  scatter,  you  drop  away,  you  become  flying 
fragments  of  what  has  been  seabound  company;  yet 
you  may  meet  again.  Those  who  came  for  health, 
those  who  escape  tedium,  those  who  follow  fashion, 
and  you  who  bring  philosophy,  all  drop  off,  all  scat- 
ter. The  people  who  are  to  inhabit  villas  in  Rapallo, 
or  who  have  friends  in  Fiesole  with  whom  they  are 
to  spend  the  spring,  they  will  all  gradually  drop 
away. 

You  may  find  them  again  after  the  scattering,  and 
you  may  find  that  the  villa  in  Rapallo  is  a  cheap  pen- 
sion, or  that  the  Fiesole  visit  has  resulted  in  a  fever- 
ish chase  behind  a  guide  in  the  Pitti  Gallery.  Vastly 
amusing  is  it  to  note  these  changes,  later  in  the  year, 
when  such  flying  fragments  of  humanity  from  this 
or  that  ship  meet;  to  see  how  the  uninspired  idiots 
of  the  sea  have  regained  human  intelligence,  how  the 
dowager  duchesses  who  asked  insane  questions  of  the 
skipper  are  now  badgering  all  the  hotel  portiers  of 
Europe,  and  how  the  Popular  Novelist  has  succeeded 
in  maintaining  his  personal  fame  by  the  simple  trick 
of  constantly  changing  his  audience.  In  this  or  that 
European  watering-place  you  may  discover  convales- 
cents recovering  from  the  ship's  concert — an  afflic- 
tion far  worse  than  seasickness. 

The  ship's  companies  scattered,  its  members  first 
gaily  adventuring  forth  upon  the  patient  older  conti- 
nent, then  reassembled  for  their  return,  and  then 
once  more  flung  forth  upon  their  own  land, — we  may 
again  observe  the  cynical  commuter  of  the  Atlantic, 
shaking  himself,  as  a  dog  who  has  been  in  the  water, 
and  muttering  again,  as  he  gradually  regains  his  hold 
upon  a  rational  outlook : 


AT    SEA  39 

"From  them  that  go  down  to  the  sea  in  ships,  good 
Lord,  deliver  us!" 

We  others,  not  yet  so  cynical,  reach  philosophy  in 
the  reflection  that,  when  all  the  pseudo-human  crea- 
tures aboard  the  lugger  are  counted,  there  still  re- 
mains a  small  residue  of  delightful,  genuine,  real 
human  beings  whom  to  recall  with  pleasure  for  the 
rest  of  life.  Whether  you  are  fashionable  or  merely 
human,  snob  or  philosopher,  you  will  never  regret 
such  journey. 


CHAPTER   TWO 

EGYPT    RUINED    FOR    A    TOURIST    HOLIDAY 

IF  the  annually  increasing  horde  of  Anglo-Saxons 
wintering  abroad  ministers  thereby  to  its  own 
delight,  there  are  those  to  whom  it  is  a  special 
aversion.  In  the  case  of  that  French  lieuten- 
ant who  writes  under  the  name  of  Pierre  Loti  that 
aversion  has  been  so  expressed  as  to  make  the  most 
delightful  of  reading,  especially  concerning  Egypt. 
Loti  loves  Egypt,  and  he  hates  travelers,  and  out  of 
that  love  and  that  hatred  beautiful  pages  have  been 
born.  It  is  impossible  to  write  more  beautifully  of 
Egypt  than  Loti  has  done.  In  that  wonderful  prose 
of  his,  as  tremulous  as  light,  as  vibrant  as  distant 
music,  he  has  painted  the  beauties  of  that  land  of 
roseate  skies,  blinding  sands,  blood-colored  rocks, 
and  immortal  ruins.  Yet  for  those  prose  beauties 
of  his,  for  the  pages  on  which  he  has  spilled  the  crys- 
tal jewels  of  his  phrases  about  Egypt  as  lavishly  as, 
in  other  books,  he  did  upon  the  subjects  of  Japan  and 
Constantinople,  you  are  not  to  look  here.  Here  I 
would  remark  only  upon  those  pages  in  his  "La  Mort 
de  Philae"  which  express  his  rage  against  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  tourist.  Never  can  one  sufficiently  emphasize 
any  document  which  bids  "the  others"  mend  their 
manners. 

For,  as  philosophy  shows,  in  cases  of  this  sort  we 
are  never,   ourselves,   the   tourists   assailed.     It  is 

40 


EGYPT    RUINED  41 

always  "the  others."  We  bear  with  the  utmost  calm 
the  chastisement  of  an  entire  class  in  which  we  im- 
agine ourselves  to  be  distinct  exceptions.  It  has  been 
said  that  one  cannot  indict  a  nation.  But  Loti  has 
done  his  best  to  indict  the  whole  tourist  tribe.  Or, 
to  be  precise,  he  regrets  their  existence;  they,  for 
him,  obscure  and  spoil  the  whole  Egyptian  country. 
Upon  its  charm,  its  mystery  and  myth,  this  tourist 
tribe  obtrudes — so  runs  the  Loti  plaint — its  ever- 
hideous  self. 

The  tourists  represent  to  Loti  the  human  faces  of 
modernity.  And,  as  we  know  from  all  his  books,  he 
is  a  sworn  foe  to  modernity.  Ruskin  fought  no  more 
fiercely  against  our  utilitarian  age  than  does  this 
Frenchman,  supposedly  in  the  employ  of  Mars,  but 
really  servant  of  the  Muse.  English  rule  in  Egypt, 
England's  treatment  of  the  Nile  waters,  the  building 
of  the  Assouan  Dam — all  these  matters  draw  Loti's 
gentle  anger;  but  most  of  all  it  is  the  tourists,  the 
tourist  agencies.  Curiously  enough,  he  never  names 
American  tourists  specifically.  Yet  we  cannot  fancy 
ourselves  immune  from  his  disfavor;  he  has  simply 
lumped  us  with  the  English,  the  dominant  race  among 
the  visitors  there. 

Night,  the  night  of  latter-day  Egypt,  may  be  said 
to  be  one  dominant  note  of  Loti.  Night  in  Cairo, 
night  in  Thebes  and  night  in  Luxor  are  painted  in 
colors  that  for  permanence  may  surpass  Boecklin  or 
Gerome  or  Stuck.  The  night  of  Egypt,  and  Pierre 
Loti's  pity,  these  are  the  dominant  notes.  He  wrote, 
years  ago,  his  "Book  of  Pity  and  of  Death,"  and  ever 
since  the  note  of  pity  has  seemed  to  me  his  greatest. 
Throughout  this  book  he  paints  and  pities;  paints  the 


42  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

glories  of  that  land  of  ruins,  and  pities  their  being 
haunted  by  the  tourist  tribe. 

He  loses  no  time  beginning  his  diatribes  against 
modernity  as  represented  by  the  tourist.  He  has 
painted  for  us  night  upon  the  desert,  and  the  Sphinx, 
as  only  he  can  do  it,  when  he  suddenly  shows  us  the 
reverse  of  the  picture.  This  desert  of  the  Sphinx,  he 
tells  us,  is  now  threatened  on  every  side  by  modern- 
ism, and  is  becoming  a  meeting  place  for  the  idlers 
and  the  parvenus  of  the  whole  world.  He  goes  on: 

"It  is  true  that  so  far  nobody  has  dared  to  profane 
the  Sphinx  by  building  in  immediate  proximity  to  its 
grandeur,  the  fixed  disdain  of  which  may  still  be 
potent.  Yet,  scarcely  half  a  league  away,  is  the  ter- 
minus of  a  road  where  cabs  and  tramways  gather, 
and  where  motor  cars  of  expensive  makes  emit  their 
ducklike  quacks;  and  yonder,  behind  the  Pyramid 
of  Cheops,  looms  a  vast  hotel,  swarming  with  snobs, 
and  with  fashionables  feathered  as  insanely  as  red- 
skins for  the  scalp  dance;  with  invalids  in  search  of 
fresh  air;  with  young  English  consumptives  or  old 
victims  of  rheumatism  seeking  the  dry  winds." 

For  a  little  time  we  are  again  in  the  Egypt  of  the 
Sphinx  and  the  many  infinite  speculations  which  that 
figure  has  started  without  satisfying;  then  Loti,  with 
his  gentle  irony,  marks  the  passing  midnight  hour  by 
showing  us  the  groups  of  tourists  separating  and  dis- 
appearing to  regain  the  hotel,  where  the  orchestra 
doubtless  still  rages,  or  to  enter  their  motor  cars  to 
be  whirled  to  some  Cairo  club  to  play  bridge,  a  pas- 
time to  which  to-day,  sadly  remarks  our  author,  "even 
superior  minds  descend." 

Next  we  are  shown  the  decay  of  the  old  Cairo 


EGYPT    RUINED  43 

that  was,  the  real  Cairo.  Loti  is  wrapped  in  solemn 
peace  before  the  tomb  of  Mehemet  All,  engaged  in 
reverent  reflections,  when  breaking  in  there  comes 
"an  uproar  of  loud  Teuton  talk."  Let  it  be  noted 
that  M.  Loti  is  impartial;  he  loathes  modernity;  he 
does  not  care  what  national  flag  is  waved.  Even  his 
own  French  nation  does  not  escape  his  reproach,  as, 
in  the  matter  of  Egypt's  use  of  absinthe,  you  shall 
frequently  see  in  this  book.  Let  us  return  to  the 
Teuton  uproar: 

".  .  .  The  Teuton  tongue.  And  shouts !  And 
laughter!  .  .  .  how  is  it  possible,  so  close  to 
Death?  .  .  .  There  enters  a  band  of  tourists,  got 
up  smartly,  or  near-smart.  A  comically  inclined 
guide  is  labeling  the  beauty  spots  for  them,  talking 
with  all  his  might  as  if  he  was  the  capper  for  a  circus. 
And  one  of  the  ladies,  whose  sandals,  too  large  for 
her,  make  her  stumble,  bursts  into  a  high,  foolish 
laugh,  long  drawn  out,  like  the  gobbling  of  a  turkey. 

uls  there  not,  then,  any  policeman,  any  watchman, 
in  this  sacred  mosque?  And  among  the  devout  pros- 
trate in  prayer,  not  one  to  rise  indignantly?  .  .  . 
Who,  after  this,  can  ever  talk  to  us  of  Egyptian 
fanaticism?  Rather  they  are  too  tolerant.  I  should 
like  to  see  how,  in  any  church  in  Europe  where  men 
were  on  their  knees  in  prayer,  Mussulman  tourists 
who — impossible  conception! — behaved  as  badly  as 
those  savages  did  would  be  received." 

Of  the  many  mosques  of  Cairo  we  are  given 
sketches  that  seem  almost  without  a  flaw.  Yet  for 
Loti  there  is  ever  a  flaw. 

"What,"  he  asks,  "do  those  mosques  lack?  .  .  . 
It  must  be  that  access  to  them  is  too  easy,  that  one 


44  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

feels  one's  self  too  close  to  the  modernized,  hotel- 
infested  regions  filled  with  tourists,  and  that  one  fore- 
sees at  any  moment  the  clamorous  intrusion  of  a  band 
of  Cook's  selected,  Baedeker  in  hand.  Alas!  these 
are  the  mosques  of  Cairo,  of  poor  invaded  and  pro- 
faned Cairo.  .  .  .  On  for  those  of  Morocco,  so 
jealously  closed!  Those  of  Persia,  or  even  of  Old 
Stamboul,  where  the  shroud  of  Islam  wraps  you  in 
silence,  and  gently  falls  upon  your  shoulders  the 
moment  that  you  cross  the  threshold!" 

Not  even  the  outskirts  of  Cairo,  which  tempt  Loti 
to  some  of  his  finest  descriptive  passages,  are  clear  of 
his  enemies.  In  order  not  to  meet  any  tourists,  he 
has  chosen  for  his  nocturnal  visit  a  night  that  was 
none  of  the  clearest.  But — 

"As  we  approached  the  vast  tomb  of  Sultan  Bar- 
kouk  the  assassin  we  saw  issuing  from  it  a  gang,  a 
score  or  so  in  file,  emerging  from  the  shadow  of  the 
ruined  walls — each  bumping  about  on  his  little  don- 
key, and  each  followed  by  the  inevitable  donkey 
driver  incessantly  belaboring  his  beast.  They  are 
on  their  way  back  to  Cairo,  the  show  being  over,  and 
they  exchange,  at  the  tops  of  their  voices,  from  one 
donkey  to  another,  their  mostly  inept  impressions, 
in  various  Western  tongues!  Behold,  even  in  this 
crew  there  is  the  traditional  belated  lady,  who  lags 
quite  a  distance  back;  she  seems,  as  well  as  the  moon 
enables  one  to  judge,  a  somewhat  ripe  flower,  but  still 
has  her  attractions  for  the  donkeyman,  who,  with 
both  hands,  supports  her  on  her  saddle,  from  behind, 
with  a  solicitude  that  is  touching.  .  .  .  Ah !  these 
little  Egyptian  donkeys,  so  observing,  so  philosophic, 
so  sly,  if  only  they  could  write  their  memoirs !  What 


EGYPT    RUINED  45 

many  amusing  things  they  have  seen  in  the  outskirts 
of  Cairo  at  night!" 

In  another  passage  M.  Loti  recurs  to  the  donkey 
detail.  He  had  attempted  the  funereal  splendors  of 
Abydos,  of  the  temple  of  Osiris  raised  by  Sethos,  and 
once  again  he  had  been  routed  by  the  tourists  and 
their  luncheon.  At  the  end  of  one  of  his  most  ran- 
corous attacks  upon  the  tourist  tribe  he  apostrophises 
one  of  the  donkey  burden  bearers : 

"There  was  one  love  of  a  white  donkey  that  looked 
at  me,  and  in  a  flash  we  understood  each  other  and 
mutual  sympathy  was  born.  A  Cookess  in  glasses 
sat  this  donkey;  the  most  awful  one  of  them  all,  bony 
and  severe;  over  her  traveling  dress,  already  suffi- 
ciently formidable,  she  had  drawn  a  tennis  jersey  that 
still  more  accentuated  her  angles  until  her  person 
seemed  to  breathe  the  very  incarnation  of  British 
respectability.  Besides  it  would  have  seemed  more 
fair — so  long  were  her  legs,  which  held  no  attraction 
for  the  human  observer — that  it  had  been  she  who 
carried  the  donkey. 

"He  gazed  at  me  sadly,  the  poor  little  white  chap, 
his  ears  twitching  ceaselessly,  and  his  fine  eyes,  so 
all-observing,  were  unmistakably  saying  to  me : 

"  She  is  hideous,  isn't  she?1 

"  Good  Lord,  yes,  you  poor  little  burden  bearer. 
But  consider,  glued  to  your  back  as  she  is,  up  there, 
you  have  at  least  this  advantage  over  me,  that  you  no 
longer  see  her.' 

"Yet  that  reflection  of  mine,  however  wise,  did  not 
console  him,  and  his  look  told  me  that  he  would  be 
prouder  to  carry,  like  so  many  of  his  fellows,  an  ordi- 
nary bundle  of  sugar  cane." 


46  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

In  that  haunt  of  Abydos,  redolent  of  ghosts,  M. 
Loti  had  been  more  than  usually  angered  by  the  in- 
vading hordes.  He  had  been  roused  from  his  dreams 
of  tombs,  of  sanctuaries,  of  prehistoric  peoples,  there 
in  the  valley  of  the  Nile,  by  the  noise  of  people  talk- 
ing and  gabbling  in  British  accents,  of  glasses  clink- 
ing, of  forks  clattering  on  plates.  He  realized  then 
that  his  temple  was  desecrated  by  a  tribe  of  tourists 
lunching. 

"Poor,  poor  temple,  to  what  are  you  fallen !  What 
excess  of  grotesque  profanation  is  this?  More  than 
a  score  of  places  laid  at  table  for  a  convivial  crew  of 
both  sexes  of  those  peculiar  beings  shepherded  by 
Thomas  Cook  &  Son,  Egypt,  Limited.  Cork  helmets 
and  blue  spectacles.  Drinking  whisky  and  soda ;  eat- 
ing with  their  buckteeth,  and  throwing  away  the 
greasy  paper  that  held  the  food.  And  the  women, 
oh !  those  women,  what  scarecrows !  .  .  .  And  it 
is  like  that  every  day,  during  the  season,  so  the  black- 
robed  Bedouin  guides  tell  us.  A  luncheon  'chez 
Osiris'  is  part  of  the  programme  of  'pleasure  trips,' 
Every  noon  a  new  gang  arrives,  on  irresponsible  and 
unfortunate  donkeys;  as  for  the  tables  and  plates, 
they  are  kept  stored  in  the  ancient  temple ! 

"Let  us  fly  quickly,  and  if  possible  before  the  sight 
has  been  stabbed  upon  our  memories.  .  .  .  But, 
alas !  even  when  we  are  outside,  alone  once  more  upon 
the  shining  sands,  we  can  no  longer  take  anything 
seriously;  Abydos,  the  desert,  all  have  ceased  to 
exist;  those  female  faces  haunt  us,  and  their  hats, 
and  their  looks  behind  their  sun  glasses.  .  .  .  The 
Cook  face  was  once  explained  to  me  in  what  seems, 
off-hand,  a  reasonable  way:  'The  United  Kingdom, 


EGYPT    RUINED  47 

jealous  of  the  well-earned  repute  for  beauty  of  its 
girls,  submitted  them  to  a  jury  when  they  reached 
maturity.  To  those  who  were  adjudged  too  ugly  for 
purposes  of  posterity  was  given  a  perpetual  pass  with 
Thomas  Cook  &  Son,  which  thus  vowed  them  to  an 
endless  voyage  that  precluded  their  leisure  for  certain 
other  trifling  details  of  life.'  The  explanation  fasci- 
nated me  from  the  first.  But  a  more  careful  scrutiny 
of  these  hordes  infesting  the  valley  of  the  Nile  leads 
me  to  submit  that  all  those  Englishwomen  are  of  a 
notoriously  canonical  age.  ...  so  that  I  remain 
perplexed." 

On  a  further  page  our  author  laments  the  desecra- 
tion of  the  Nile  to  its  present  uses.  He  paints  for  us 
incomparable  etchings  of  the  Nile  of  other  days,  and 
of  all  that  it  evokes  in  sights  and  sounds.  He  makes 
us  feel  again  that  peace  which,  passing  understand- 
ing, once  dwelt  there.  And  now — 

"And  now,  before  the  tiniest  of  little  towns — amid 
the  primitive  little  boats,  that  are  still  numerous, 
pointing  their  timbers  like  long  reeds  toward  the  blue 
sky — here  are  always,  as  landings  for  the  tourist 
steamers,  enormous  black  pontoons  disfiguring  all 
things  by  their  presence  and  by  their  shrieking  ad- 
vertisements :  'Thos.  Cook  &  Son,  Egypt,  Limited.' 
Further,  one  hears  the  whistle  of  the  train  that  mer- 
cilessly skirts  the  river,  to  traverse  thence  the  Delta 
as  far  as  the  Soudan,  carrying  hordes  of  European 
invaders.  And,  finally,  close  to  the  stations  are  the 
inevitable  factories,  ironically  triumphant,  dominat- 
ing with  their  smokestacks  all  those  poor,  ruinous 
objects  that  still  attempt  to  voice  Egypt  and  its 
mystery.  .  .  . 


48  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

"Poor,  poor  Nile,  that  once  reflected  on  its  warm, 
glassy  waters  the  sum  of  earthly  magnificence,  that 
bore  so  many  barks  of  gods  and  goddesses  in  train 
behind  the  golden  ship  of  Ammon,  and  that  knew 
only,  until  the  dawn  of  ages,  purity  impeccable,  in 
human  form  as  well  as  in  architectural  conceptions  I 
.  .  .  What  a  fall !  After  that  disdainful  slumber 
of  twenty  centuries,  to  bear  to-day  the  floating  bar- 
racks of  Cook's  agency,  to  feed  sugar  factories,  and 
to  exhaust  itself  in  growing  from  its  fecund  mud  the 
stuff  for  English  cottons !  .  .  ." 

Wherever  M.  Loti  goes  he  has  the  same  lament. 
He  visits  Luxor,  and  on  Luxor  modernized  he  pens 
one  of  his  most  plaintive  chapters.  He  finds  Luxor 
dominated  by  the  stucco  monstrosity  of  a  huge  hotel, 
and  the  whole  district  flooded  with  impossible  people, 
with  tourist  boats ;  he  finds  the  whole  place  swarming 
with  specimens  of  the  whole  world's  plutocracy, 
dressed  by  the  same  tailors,  hatted  by  the  same  hat- 
ters; shops  and  all  the  other  impedimenta  of  so-called 
civilization;  and,  above  all  the  babel  of  the  tourist, 
the  same  people  whom  one  sees  at  Nice  or  on  the 
Riviera.  The  noise  of  dynamos  disturbs  these  an- 
cient airs. 

At  Thebes  it  is  the  same.  There  are  chapters  on 
Thebes  at  high  noon,  Thebes  at  night.  We  see  the 
beauties  as  Loti  can  so  graphically  paint  them,  and 
then  we  are  shown  the  blots  upon  them;  that  is  the 
story  of  almost  every  chapter  in  the  book.  Even 
midnight  in  Thebes  is  not  safe: 

"This  moon,"  he  sighs,  "will  presently  bring  peo- 
ple. A  league  away,  at  Luxor,  I  know  well  they  are 


EGYPT    RUINED  49 

hurriedly  rising  from  their  tables,  so  as  not  to  miss 
the  celebrated  spectacle.  For  me,  then,  it  is  time  to 
escape,  and  so  I  move  away,  toward  the  pyramids  of 
Ptolemy,  where  dwell  the  watchmen  of  the  night. 
Already  they  are  busy,  these  Bedouins,  opening  the 
way  for  some  tourists,  who  have  shown  permits,  and 
who  carry  kodaks  and  stuff  for  flashlight  pictures 
there,  in  the  temples.  .  .  .  Further  off  is  the  crowd 
arriving,  carriages,  people  ahorse,  on  donkeys,  talk- 
ing and  shouting,  in  all  tongues  save  Egyptian.  .  ." 

So  we  could  go  on,  chapter  on  chapter.  We  gain 
throughout  the  sharp  outline  of  Loti,  poet  and  mys- 
tic, most  passionate  of  pagans,  and  most  devout  of 
religious  men,  flying,  always  flying,  before  the  tour- 
ists of  our  time.  He  is  like  Lafcadio  Hearn,  like 
Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  and  many  others,  masters 
of  the  same  craft  of  prose,  himself  somewhat  out  of 
tune  with  the  time.  He  is  of  those  who  remind  us 
of  other  and,  so  they  vow,  much  finer  times.  What 
these  men  suffer,  in  that  they  are  so  out  of  tune  with 
our  drab  modern  tone,  we  gain,  since  they  so  admir- 
ably voice  their  sufferings  in  prose. 

Loti  has  many  fine  passages  calling  on  the  Egyp- 
tian of  to-day  to  restore  the  ancient,  reverent  things 
and  to  oust  all  these  alien  influences.  There  are  pas- 
sages aimed  at  the  English  financial  operations  by 
which  Egypt  is  squeezed  like  a  lemon.  But,  chiefly, 
his  note  is  pity  for  the  Egypt  of  to-day,  for  tourist- 
ridden  Egypt,  and  pity  for  the  illimitable  patience  of 
the  Egyptian  fellaheen. 

As  for  his  hatred  of  the  tourist,  here  is  the  irony 


50  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

of  things  exemplified:  his  pages  on  Egypt  are  so 
beautiful  in  their  descriptions,  in  their  evocations  of 
all  that  is  mysterious  and  lovely  in  that  land,  that  all 
who  read  will  wish  to  see  Egypt — and  thereby  swell 
the  army  of  the  tourists  so  loathed  by  M.  Loti. 


CHAPTER   THREE 

VANDALISM    IN    MODERN    FLORENCE 

IT  is  not  only  Luxor  that  the  vandals  have  tried 
to  modernize;  not  alone  Loti  who  has  pro- 
tested. 

It  is  curious  to  note  how  these  things  move 
in  waves,  though  continents  and  oceans  may  inter- 
vene. The  pest  of  attempting  to  fill  with  plaster  the 
fine  ruins  of  this  or  that  splendid  and  authentic  bit 
of  architecture  or  sculpture  in  this  or  that  corner  of 
the  ancient  world ;  of  disclosing  with  acids  and  washes 
portions  of  antique  paintings  hitherto  rich  in  mys- 
tery and  the  dignifying  veils  of  Time;  of  interpret- 
ing through  impertinent  and  dilettante  spectacles  the 
meanings  of  nobly  cryptic  passages  in  paint,  in  prose 
or  stone — this  pest  has  for  many  years  past  been  run- 
ning a  devastating  blaze  across  the  world  of  art. 
Money,  perhaps,  has  been  the  root  of  some  of  that 
evil;  there  are  hardly  authentic  antiquities  enough 
for  the  collecting  millionaires,  and  so  the  manufac- 
ture of  antiquities,  the  falsifying  of  the  genuine,  the 
forging  and  the  faking  have  resulted  simply  to  supply 
a  demand.  Of  all  that  forging  and  doctoring  up  of 
spurious  antiquities,  Florence  has  long  been  the 
capital. 

Just  as  it  has  meant  to  the  world  at  large  the  piv- 
otal point  in  the  history  of  the  arts  of  painting  and 
sculpture,  so  has  Florence  harbored  within  stone's 

51 


52  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

throws  of  its  great  museums  and  art  palaces  the 
greatest  art  forgers  in  the  world.  This  has  for  years 
been  an  accepted  truth  in  the  world  of  art. 

When  the  antique  masterpieces  of  Florence  have 
for  years  past  shown  the  blighting  activities  of  the 
itch  for  restoration,  it  is  little  wonder  that  the  can- 
vases of  a  Homer  Martin  should  have  been  put  under 
legal  scrutiny  that  caused  nothing  less  than  scandal- 
ous chatter  in  every  artistic  community  in  America, 
or  that  Rembrandt's  "Mill"  or  this  or  that  other  sup- 
posed masterpiece  has  been  declared  of  doubtful 
authenticity.  Since  the  fiasco  of  Herr  von  Bode  and 
other  omniscient  gentlemen,  we  are  somewhat  accus- 
tomed to  doubt.  Yet  it  was  something  of  a  shock  to 
discover  that  not  even  the  great  public  galleries  of 
Florence — safe,  we  supposed,  from  the  chicane  pos- 
sible in  private  places — have  been  free  from  the 
mania  for  restoring,  for  touching  up,  for  dangerously 
meddling,  in  short,  with  the  world's  accepted  master- 
pieces in  paint. 

THE  war  of  the  resident  painters  and  connoisseurs 
against  the  authorities  directing  the  great  Florentine 
galleries  has  been  long  in  coming  to  a  head.  The 
directorate  of  the  Uffizi  and  Pitti  seems,  indeed,  to 
have  been  as  rank  a  body  as  any  Park  Commission  or 
Water  Board  convicted  of  incompetence  and  corrup- 
tion in  an  American  municipality.  Not  that  either 
dishonesty  or  any  selfish  sort  of  corruption  was  di- 
rectly charged  against  those  governing  bodies.  Their 
great  crime,  in  the  eyes  of  the  opposition,  was  igno- 
rance. They  hung  the  pictures  badly;  they  issued 
catalogues  that  reeked  with  error,  and  then,  worst  of 


VANDALISM    IN    FLORENCE         53 

all,  they  began  most  abominably  to  manhandle  some 
of  the  most  cherished  masterpieces  in  the  Florentine 
world  of  paint.  Works  by  Raphael,  by  Leonardo, 
were  subjected  to  restoration,  until  entire  ruffs  or 
collars,  or  shoulder  capes,  were  brought  into  view 
in  cases  where,  so  the  artists  and  unattached  connois- 
seurs declared,  the  antique  artist  himself  had  been  at 
pains  to  obscure  these  first  crude  outlines.  Simply 
because  the  restorer,  with  his  chemicals  and  his  erod- 
ing processes,  discovered  the  canvas  held  those 
things,  he  determined  to  have  those  things  displayed. 
The  artist  was  too  dead  to  protest. 

Florence  is,  as  most  people  know,  the  mecca  of  the 
working  art-world  to-day.  Hardly  a  painter  in  any 
country  who  does  not  come,  at  one  time  or  another, 
to 'Florence.  The  German,  the  English  and  the 
American  painters  come  oftenest  and  stay  longest. 
The  colony  of  resident  artists  is  not  inconsiderable. 
You  may,  in  the  season,  go  to  one  of  the  great  an- 
tique galleries  every  morning  and  to  a  studio  of  a 
modern  painter  every  afternoon.  William  Chase 
takes  his  class  of  students  there  every  now  and  again; 
great  German  teachers  do  the  same.  As  you  walk 
or  drive  on  the  Viale  you  cannot  well  help  noting  the 
curious  square  tower  in  which  the  painter  Roelshoven 
has  his  dwelling  and  his  workshop.  And  you  may 
see,  from  that  same  spot,  the  wondrous  house  where 
lives  the  greatest  antique  dealer  and  greatest  fraud  in 
all  Florence.  So  these  opposites  are  always  side  by 
side.  It  is  a  community  of  living  artists  as  well  as 
of  dead  masterpieces.  And  that  community  of  living 
artists  and  amateurs  of  art  and  of  antiquity  has  a 


54  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

constant  fight  against  the  encroachment  of  that  hid- 
eous plague  of  to-day,  the  mania  for  restoration. 

Florence  itself,  as  a  town,  as  a  cluster  of  incom- 
parable architectural  antiquities,  has  had  to  suffer 
from  this  plague.  Not  until  after  the  old  market, 
with  its  charming  and  inimitable  gems  and  nooks  and 
historic  associations,  had  been  torn  away  to  make 
way  for  to-day's  hideous  open  square,  with  the  fright- 
ful equestrian  statue  of  the  king;  not  until  then  did 
the  artists  and  the  real  lovers  of  Florence  realize  that 
there  must  be  co-operation  to  defeat  the  enemy.  The 
town  government  must,  in  those  years,  have  had  a 
silly  dream  of  making  Florence  more  modern,  more 
comfortable,  more  acceptable  to  the  tourist  who 
wishes  to  sit  outdoors  and  drink  beer.  Well,  you 
can  do  that  to-day  on  that  square;  but,  if  you  have 
the  faintest  glimmer  in  you  of  the  value  of  tone  and 
time,  you  curse  as  you  sit  there.  Florence  must  be 
crowded  and  narrow  and  dark  and  mysterious  and 
cosy  and  old  to  be  herself.  That  huge  open  square 
in  its  centre,  with  its  tourists  and  its  tables,  its  statue 
and  its  senseless  galleries  on  the  Strozzi  side,  that  is 
as  pathetic  as  a  great  tragedian  who  has  come  down 
to  be  a  sandwich  man.  The  artists,  it  is  true,  sat 
there  themselves,  on  the  side  nearest  the  straw  mar- 
ket; but  as  they  sat  they  cursed  many  things.  And 
among  those  whom  they  cursed  were  always  the  au- 
thorities of  the  Uffizi  and  the  Pitti  and  the  other 
galleries. 

IT  remained  for  the  printed  articles  of  Signor  Ric- 
cardo  Nobili  to  arouse  the  general  art-loving  public 


VANDALISM    IN    FLORENCE         55 

to  a  realization  of  the  conditions.  In  a  series  of  ana- 
lytical and  authoritative  papers  this  critic  and  artist 
proved  crime  after  crime  against  the  authorities. 
The  gist  of  the  whole  indictment  was  that  the  admin- 
istration of  the  public  galleries  was  utterly  incompe- 
tent, lacked  expert  knowledge  and  made  up  for  that 
only  by  bureaucratic  pompousness.  Signer  Nobili 
himself  is  the  fine  figure  in  this  whole  warfare,  which 
waged  for  months  in  Florence,  and  was  eventually 
taken  higher,  to  the  Italian  Parliament  itself.  The 
Nobilis  are  themselves  of  the  great  Tuscan  families, 
yet  Riccardo  Nobili's  achievements  are  simply  those 
of  a  strong  individual  in  art  and  art  analysis.  He  is 
himself  painter  and  sculptor;  he  could  have  gone  far 
in  either  direction;  but  he  determined  upon  connois- 
seurship  of  art  as  his  preferred  metier.  From  the 
first  he  began  war  against  the  countless  impostures 
that  his  home  town  reeked  with.  He  has  that  inex- 
plicable sixth  sense  that  tells  him  whether  a  painting, 
a  statue,  is  genuine  or  false.  Only  by  aid  of  that 
sixth  sense  can  the  most  profound  student  achieve 
actual  results  in  criticism  in  connoisseurship.  I  do 
not  think  either  Morelli  or  Berenson  have  this  sense 
so  perfectly  as  Nobili.  He  is,  as  aforesaid,  himself  a 
Tuscan ;  blood  tells  him  much  that  not  the  most  metic- 
ulous study  could  ever  seize.  He  is  himself  accom- 
plished in  paint  and  in  modeling;  he  was  one  of  the 
men  of  Julian's  in  Paris.  He  knows  all  the  secrets  of 
the  forger;  he  has  devoted  his  life  to  this  cause.  In 
a  question  of:  Is  this  a  Leonardo?  or,  Are  those 
bronze  doors  genuine  fourteenth  century?  wise  is  the 
millionaire  or  the  dealer  who  would  trust  to  that 
strange  sixth  sense  that  is  in  Riccardo  Nobili. 


56  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

It  is  even  possible,  in  comparatively  light  reading, 
to  glimpse  this  Italian  authority's  knowledge  of  the 
subject  of  art,  old  and  new.  He  published  in  Eng- 
land a  few  years  ago  a  story  called  UA  Modern  An- 
tique," in  which  he  made  popular  use  of  much  of  his 
learning  in  this  sort.  He  told  the  methods  whereby 
statues  and  canvases  were  artificially  aged;  how  the 
patine  was  perfected,  and  how,  in  short,  the  dealers 
in  antiquities  thrived  on  the  gullability  of  the  type  of 
collector  who  wanted  only  famous  names.  He  told, 
too,  how  the  modern  members  of  the  Florentine  aris- 
tocracy retrieve  their  bankrupt  fortunes  by  conspiring 
with  such  fraudulent  dealers;  how  they  lend  their 
names  to  add  a  touch  of  genuineness  to  the  spurious. 
Above  all,  Signor  Nobili  told  the  case  of  a  young 
sculptor  who  created  a  bust  which  passed  for  an  an- 
tique gem  and  was  sold  for  a  fabulous  amount  as  the 
result  of  just  such  a  conspiracy  between  dealers  and 
Florentine  nobles.  Now,  it  is  long  notorious  in  Flor- 
ence that,  for  only  one  example,  the  Strozzi  palace 
has  been  emptied  of  its  real  art  treasures  more  than 
once ;  yet  the  sale  of  specimens  labelled  genuine  owing 
to  their  having  been  "in  the  possession  of  the  Strozzi" 
still  goes  merrily  on.  Again,  the  episode  central  in 
S.  Nobili's  book  has  since  that  publication  been  almost 
exactly  paralleled  by  the  incident  of  the  Leonardo 
bust  and  Dr.  Bode. 

Florence  is  poor  in  newspapers.  One  need  recall 
only  the  Fieramosca  and  the  Nazione.  There  used 
to  be  a  paper  for  English  readers,  but  it  no  longer  ex- 
ists. People  who  really  wish  to  read  the  news  of  the 
day  are  likely  to  wait  until  the  Corriere  della  Sera 
comes  in  from  Milan  or  the  Tribuna  from  Rome. 


VANDALISM    IN    FLORENCE         57 

Yet  if  the  Nazione  had  done  nothing  save  print  these 
propagandist  articles  of  S.  Nobili's  it  would  deserve 
the  thanks  of  the  world's  art  lovers.  For  weeks  the 
critic  pounded,  in  those  pages,  against  the  adminis- 
tration of  the  Florentine  galleries;  he  convicted  them 
of  every  crime  that  ignorance  and  incompetence  can 
commit.  More  than  once  the  intimation  came  to  him 
that  if  he  would  only  stop  his  pounding  he  could  be 
made  a  cavaliere.  But  cavalieri  are  as  thick  in  Italy 
as  Legion  of  Honor  men  in  France.  S.  Nobili  was 
not  to  be  swayed  by  these  insinuations.  It  happens  he 
is  as  much  socialist  as  aristocrat;  he  consorts  with 
such  men  as  Edward  Carpenter  and  Hyndman  and 
Orage  in  England,  the  while  the  Florentine  nobility 
has  to  admit  him  as  brother.  He  Was  without  the 
passion  for  money  or  fame;  he  had  the  single  pas- 
sion for  art — art  as  the  artists  had  conceived  and  de- 
signed it.  When  that  design  was  tampered  with,  the 
analytic  critic  in  him  became  the  destructive  critic. 

SUCH  good  fighting  cannot  ever  quite  die  down, 
since  the  vandals  also  never  die.  Only  the  other  day 
one  noted,  in  Florence,  a  new  crime.  It  was  in  the 
Viale  dei  Colli,  where  the  restorer  has  been  busy  at 
the  old  tower  of  San  Miniato,  filling  in  with  plaster  all 
traces  of  the  cannon  bullets  sent  against  that  tower 
in  1 5  2  8  by  the  artillery  of  Charles  V.  during  the  Flor- 
entine siege. 

If  ours  be  indeed  an  age  of  facts,  let  them  at  least 
be  authentic  facts.  We  have  too  many  pseudo  art 
lovers  who  patter  half-truth  and  discuss  as  history  the 
things  that  are  not  so.  There  are  too  many  Lilian 
Whitings  who,  as  in  her  "Florence  of  Landor,"  point 


58  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

out  as  "near  the  Villa  Landor  an  old  villa  with  mar- 
ble terrace,  which  dates  back  to  1658,  and  where  Lo- 
renzo the  Magnificent  died."  .  .  .  Now,  Lo- 
renzo died  at  Villa  di  Careggi  in  1492  ! 

If  we  look  upon  antique  art  and  history,  let  us  at 
least  try  for  the  authentic  article.  Upon  antique 
Florence,  upon  Florentine  art,  I  know  but  one  sure 
guide,  whom  I  have  already  named.  The  Baedekers 
and  the  Brownings  and  the  Romolas  may  tell  you  just 
what  will  least  disturb  your  parochial  culture.  Only 
Hewlett  and  Ouida  have  caught  the  tone  of  the  Tus- 
can peasant  and  the  Tuscan  patrician,  and  only  Ric- 
cardo  Nobili,  not  Berenson  and  not  Morelli,  has  the 
secret  divining-rod  that  shall  find  the  well  of  authentic 
Tuscan  art. 

The  Raphaels  and  the  Leonardos  are  centuries 
dead;  Homer  Martin  was  but  briefly  dead;  yet  his 
canvases  did  not  escape  the  hand  of  the  restorer. 
What  is  the  moral  for  the  buyer  of  pictures?  What 
said  George  Moore,  in  his  impertinent  youth,  of 
Henry  James,  but  this :  "Right  bang  in  front  of  the 
reader  nothing  happens." 

Will  the  picture-buyer  of  the  future  have  to  insist 
upon  sitting  in  the  painter's  studio  while  the  picture 
grows  "right  bang  in  front  of  him?" 


CHAPTER    FOUR 

MUNICH:    HOME    OF   THE    ARTS 

I 
MODERNITY,    PAINT,    AND    CARNIVAL 

IN  life,  as  in  art,  the  essentially  modern  spirit  is 
hard  to  keep  under.  If  Egypt,  if  Florence,  if 
even  Venice  succeed,  for  a  time,  in  suffusing  us 
with  a  romantic,  not  to  say  archaic  outlook 
upon  life  and  its  arts,  such  other-century  sentiment 
does  not  long  survive  the  chilly  Alpine  crossing. 
In  order  properly  to  emerge  as  moderns  interested 
in  modernity,  the  place  to  make  for  is  Munich.  Yes, 
Munich  is  the  place  wherein  to  reassert  that  in  us 
which  had  of  late  been  too  much  submerged  beneath 
the  madness  of  the  Venetian  moon  and  the  lyric  con- 
fusion of  the  nightingales  in  Florence.  We  were  tired 
of  Giotto  and  all  his  works ;  beneath  the  gold  dome  of 
St.  Mark's  all  you  could  catch  was  rheumatism;  be- 
tween the  Molo  and  the  Lido  there  was  little  save 
the  typhoid  germ,  and  the  antiquity  merchants  in  the 
Via  Maggio  were  descendants  of  the  Forty  Thieves. 
We  would  shake  from  us  the  dust  of  Italy. 

To  be  rid  of  Italian  dust  is  not,  of  course,  possible 
until  you  have  the  hottest  of  hot  baths  in  whatever 
cleaner  country  your  train  has  deposited  you.  For, 
as  all  old  travelers  will  tell  you,  however  enamored 

59 


60  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

you  may  be  of  antique  art  and  its  sacred  crusts  of 
filth,  it  takes  something  more  than  human  Anglo- 
Saxon  courage  to  endure  patiently  the  dirt-encum- 
bered interiors  of  Italian  railway  trains.  They  are 
doubtless  as  sacred  from  the  labors  of  the  cleaner  as 
a  veritable  bronze  of  the  fourteenth  century.  Still, 
after  a  hot  bath  it  is  possible  once  again  to  feel  mod- 
ern— and  clean. 

Modernity  and  cleanliness.  No  matter  from 
where  you  reach  any  of  the  great  German  capitals, 
whether  from  the  sunshine  and  rags  of  Italy  or  the 
fog  and  rags  of  England,  the  contrast  results,  for  all 
who  love  wide  spaces,  clean  streets  and  a  general 
average  of  wholesome  prosperity,  always  in  favor  of 
Germany. 

I  recall  leaving  London  just  after  one  of  those  tur- 
bulent general  elections  which  inaugurated  the  reign 
of  George  V.  There  the  grim  contrasts  between  high 
and  low,  between  rich  and  poor,  between  fashion- 
plates  and  shuffling  tatterdemalions,  had  never  before 
seemed  so  vivid.  Those  very  contrasts  had  loomed 
angrily  through  the  fog  that  obscured  buildings  and 
horizons.  Though  the  tumult  and  the  shouting  of 
the  great  political  contest  itself  might  fade  from  one's 
ears,  the  memory  of  the  bitterness  between  the  op- 
posed forces  lingered.  Paris  has  had  its  mercurial 
waves  of  passion  and  bloodshed  as  the  commoner 
frothed  against  the  patrician ;  Italy  and  all  the  other 
Latin  countries  see  socialism  and  anarchy  taking 
bloody  shape  now  and  again,  and  in  Germany  itself 
the  social-democrat  is  a  factor  which  politically  and 
even  diplomatically  it  has  become  necessary  to  reckon 
with;  yet  in  none  of  these  countries,  it  must  be  con- 


MODERNITY,  PAINT,  CARNIVAL     61 

fessed,  are  the  extremes  farther  apart  than  in  Eng- 
land, nor  an  equal  depth  of  resentment  under  what 
until  quite  recently  seemed  to  the  superficial  observer 
to  be  resignation. 

I  had  to  smile  bitterly  in  noting,  once  again,  the 
splendid  spaces,  the  clean  streets,  the  magnificent 
buildings,  public  and  private,  of  such  towns  as  Leip- 
zig and  Munich.  Recalling  some  of  the  ridiculous 
campaign  cries  from  which  I  had  but  just  come,  as, 
for  instance,  that  which  painted  Germany  as  poverty- 
stricken  and  its  workmen  forced  to  eat  black  bread 
instead  of  white,  I  felt  inclined  either  to  laughter  at 
the  general  folly  of  things  mundane  or  to  tears  at  the 
pitiable  condition  of  the  English  proletariat.  For  this 
at  once  forces  itself  upon  our  recognition  whenever 
we  pass  from  the  British  Isles  to  Germany:  though 
there  may,  in  the  latter  country,  be  distress  and  pov- 
erty in  mining  or  factory  districts,  it  does  not,  as  in 
every  great  English  town,  obtrude  itself  upon  the 
most  unwilling  observer. 

The  arrogance  and  cold  unfeelingness  of  the  Eng- 
lish have  shown  themselves  in  nothing  more  than  in 
the  calm  with  which  the  prosperous  classes  there  have 
for  years  taken  for  granted,  have  seemed  quite  obliv- 
ious to  the  horrid  and  filthy  poverty  that  festers  on 
almost  every  corner  of  the  most  fashionable  British 
thoroughfare.  Ragged  wretches,  male  and  female, 
drunken  often  enough,  begging  or  cringing,  cursing 
or  crying,  maudlin  or  sullen,  inflict  themselves  upon 
every  wayfarer  through  London,  or  Liverpool,  or 
Manchester,  or  Newcastle,  or  almost  any  other  city 
you  may  name.  The  entire  English  institution  of 
prosperity  for  the  few  depends  upon  the  servility  or 


62  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

the  wretchedness  of  the  many.  The  crossing  sweeper 
looks  for  a  half-penny  if  he  has  cleared  the  mud  from 
before  you,  for  which  sum  he  will  be  as  obsequious  as 
if  he  were  your  dog.  You  can  hardly  look  about  you 
on  Regent  street  or  the  Haymarket,  especially  at  the- 
ater time,  in  search  for  a  taxi,  but  half  a  dozen  sturdy 
lads  in  rags  will  fight  for  the  opportunity  to  save  you 
your  search.  Too  long  the  Englishman  of  means  has 
taken  all  this  servility  as  his  right,  and  all  this  pov- 
erty as  much  a  matter  of  necessity  as  his  own  comfort. 
If  recent  political  events  in  England  did  nothing  else, 
they  must  at  least  have  waked  the  dullard  who  pre- 
tends to  the  "better  class"  into  realization  of  the  fact 
that  the  monster  underneath  him  is  a  living  and  omi- 
nous reality. 

For  England,  through  this  or  that  party  in  politics, 
to  pretend  that  the  case  of  the  German  proletariat  is 
worse  that  its  own — that  is,  indeed,  to  laugh!  The 
mines,  the  factories,  the  sweatshops  of  Germany  may 
have  their  human  derelicts,  too ;  but  so  much  is  sure, 
that  these  are  never  thrown  upon  the  metropolitan 
stream  for  all  to  see.  Greater  heights  there  may 
be  in  England;  but  the  depths  are  hideously 
lower;  the  average  of  decent  well-being  is  far  greater 
in  Germany.  You  may  walk  the  streets  in  any  Ger- 
man capital  without  finding  a  beggar.  Even  the 
sight  of  women  fulfilling  the  duties  of  a  street-clean- 
ing department  in  the  great  towns  of  Saxony,  Prussia 
and  Bavaria  is  not  likely  to  offend,  but  rather  to 
amuse  you.  These  are  eminently  vigorous  and  able- 
bodied  persons ;  they  will  slang  you  roundly  if  you  do 
not  give  proper  way  to  them  as  they  strew  sand  upon 
the  icy  pavements,  and  they  make  you  smile  most 


MODERNITY,  PAINT,  CARNIVAL     63 

grimly  if  you  remember  the  able-bodied  loafers  who 
parade  London  perpetually  declaring — for  political 
and  mendacious  reasons — that  uall  we  want  is  work." 
Why,  those  street-cleaning  dames  of  Leipzig  and 
Munich  even  compare  favorably,  if  you  have  any 
sense  of  humor  and  balance,  with  the  suffragette  per- 
sons of  England.  Sturdy,  wholesome  creatures  these 
are;  they  are  pictures  for  any  artist's  interest;  they 
wear  slouch  hats  and  long-caped  cloaks  with  strapped 
belts;  their  faces,  in  the  cold  weather,  are  always  half 
muffled  to  the  eyes,  and  until  he  has  looked  closely 
the  stranger  is  likely  to  be  in  doubt  as  to  whether  he  is 
regarding  men  or  women.  They  clean  the  streets, 
they  strew  sand,  and  they  tend  the  switches  for  the 
municipally-owned  street  cars.  It  would  be  interest- 
ing to  propose  to  these  good  dames  the  predicament  in 
which  the  British  workmen  has,  since  time  immemo- 
rial, pretended  to  be;  the  mere  sight  of  them  proves 
admirably  that  for  those  who  genuinely  wish  it  the 
world  has  always  work. 

Yet  it  is  of  this  German  country,  whose  towns 
show  no  rags  or  poverty,  where  streets  are  clean  and 
spacious,  where  all  look  healthy  and  content,  that 
English  newspapers  paint  pictures  in  which  bitter  pov- 
erty and  black  bread  are  large  in  the  foreground  I 

MODERN,  clean  and  artistic,  Munich  is  all  of  these. 
Time  was  when  Paris  was  clean;  it  is  clean  no  more; 
the  flying  dirt  there  goes  far  toward  obscuring  its 
charm  and  dispelling  its  glamour.  Time  was,  also, 
when  Paris  held  without  dispute  the  position  of  the 
world's  chief  center  of  artistic  student  life.  That 
place  is  now  seriously  threatened  by  Munich.  Even 


64  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

the  carnival  in  Paris  has  become  a  rather  wearisome 
farce;  in  Munich  the  carnival  and  all  its  aftermaths 
have  still  the  real  flavor  of  spontaneity.  As  for  the 
modernity  in  Munich,  you  cannot  be  there  long  be- 
fore it  greets  you.  The  street  cars  no  longer,  as  in 
Italy,  seem  intended  to  remind  you  of  how  much  more 
foolish  it  is  to  pay  money  to  ride  when  it  is  faster  to 
walk,  and  as  for  the  taximeter  motor  cars,  they  whizz 
by  you  with  the  most  bewildering  and  beguiling  fre- 
quence. Nor,  if  you  have  fallen  to  the  motor  cab's 
temptation,  will  you  be  long  left  in  doubt  as  to  what  in 
Munich  is  the  prevailing  tone.  As  you  are  whirling 
toward  the  English  garden  and  all  the  fashionable 
villegiatura  nearby,  what  is  it  that  the  driver  of  your 
car  suddenly  points  out  to  you? 

The  magnificent  house  of  Franz  Stuck,  the  painter ! 

The  spirit  of  the  town  is  in  that  episode.  It  is  a 
city  of  art  and  artists.  Not  necessarily  artists  merely 
in  paint.  From  the  house  of  Stuck  to  the  Prinz- 
Regenten  Theater,  where  they  do  the  operas  of  Wag- 
ner so  conscientiously,  is  but  a  step  away.  And  it  is 
Munich  which  supports  the  Kuenstler  Theater,  which 
is  truly  an  artistic  theater,  created  by  and  through 
genuine  artists.  Some  observations  upon  the  art  of 
the  theater  in  Germany  necessarily  follow  all  this 
contemplation  of  art  development  in  Munich.  I  shall 
come  to  that  presently.  The  point  for  immediate  con- 
templation is  this :  Can  you  imagine  an  episode  like 
that  of  the  motorman  and  the  house  of  Stuck  on  the 
American  side  of  the  water?  Your  driver  might 
point  out  to  you  the  house  of  this  or  that  millionaire; 
but,  after  that,  and  a  magnificent  guess  at  the  number 
of  dollars  represented  by  the  aforesaid  architectural 


MODERNITY,  PAINT,  CARNIVAL     65 

pile — No ;  I  think  that  would  be  the  sum  total  of  Ex- 
hibit A  to  Z  on  our  side  of  the  water.  Whereas  the 
motorman  of  Munich  not  only  pointed  out,  first  and 
foremost,  the  house  of  a  great  painter,  but  also  took 
it  for  granted  that  we  knew  who  he  was.  Had  we 
not  known,  he  would  not  condescend  to  explain. 

At  the  very  mention  of  Stuck's  name,  our  too  long 
dormant  spirit  of  modernity  awoke  to  complete  alert- 
ness. We  recalled,  indeed,  by  way  of  finally  van- 
quishing the  antique  spirit  that  had  ruled  us  while  in 
Italy,  that,  however  Philistine  the  sentiment  might 
seem,  we  preferred  Stuck's  portrait  of  himself,  done 
specially  for  the  Uffizi  gallery  in  Florence,  but  lately 
hung  there,  to  an  acre  or  so  of  the  redoubtable  an- 
tiquities underneath  that  same  roof.  For  years  that 
crowded  room  just  as  you  enter  the  Uffizi,  where 
those  wonderful  portraits  hang  that  men  like  Millais, 
and  Herkomer  and  Andreas  Zorn  did  of  themselves, 
had  seemed  to  us  one  of  the  most  interesting  in  the 
place.  Now  they  have  had  to  open  a  new  room,  in 
one  of  the  galleries  near  the  stairway  that  leads  to- 
ward the  Pitti,  to  hold  the  later  additions  in  this  sort. 
In  that  new  room  hang  portraits,  by  themselves,  of 
Franz  Stuck,  of  William  Chase  and  of  John  Sargent. 
For  our  Sargent  was,  as  you  may  have  forgotten,  born 
in  Florence.  So,  as  we  thought  of  that  wonderful 
specimen  of  paint  and  self-portraiture,  Stuck's  picture 
of  himself  in  the  Uffizi,  we  declared  it  worth  a  wilder- 
ness of  Leonardos — and  at  once,  lest  some  Italian 
had  overheard  our  thought,  told  the  motorman  to 
make  for  the  New  Pinakothek.  For  there,  as  we 
remember,  hangs  Stuck's  terrible  and  compelling  pic- 
ture of  "Sin." 


66  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

Roaming  once  more  about  the  New  Pinakothek, 
gloating  again  over  the  wonderful  collection  of  Von 
Lenbach's  masterpieces  there,  and  trying  to  deter- 
mine for  the  hundredth  time  whether  his  men  or  his 
women  are  most  admirable,  whether  his  Bismarck  is 
a  nobler  work  than  his  Saharet,  or  his  Cleo  more 
memorable  than  either,  we  observed  how,  in  the 
newer  additions  to  this  gallery,  the  passage  of  time 
was  being  definitely  marked  for  us.  There,  definitely 
established  on  those  walls,  are  pictures  by  men  who, 
not  so  many  years  ago,  were  held  most  violently  seces- 
sionistic,  who  stood  for  everything  that  was  young 
and  overbold. 

Within  the  decade  I  recall  a  visit  to  the  Berlin 
Secession,  on  the  Kurfiirsten  Damm,  where  I  first 
encountered  the  curious  art  of  Gustav  Klimt.  The 
golden  mosaic  decorative  art  of  Alphonse  Mucha,  the 
Hungarian,  was  then  still  observable  on  the  poster- 
pillars  of  Paris ;  the  art  of  Klimt,  as  first  I  saw  it,  had 
something  of  that  goldleaf  flavor,  combined  with  the 
violent  purples  of  the  ultra-impressionists.  And  now 
a  small  gem  of  this,  golden  and  subtle  without  any 
exaggeration,  hangs  in  the  Pinakothek ! 

About  the  art  of  Klimt,  practically  unknown  out- 
side of  German  countries,  I  find  my  first  impression, 
gained  six  years  ago,  worth  recalling.  In  none  of  his 
newer  canvases,  either  in  the  Miethke  Gallery  in 
Vienna,  or  in  Hermann  Bahr's  villa  m  St.  Veit 
(where,  within  the  twelvemonth,  I  saw  Klimt  can- 
vases as  full  of  magic  and  intoxication  as  a  dream  of 
Aphrodite  in  a  sea  of  gold),  have  I  found  anything 
to  put  my  earliest  appreciation  out  of  court.  So  that 
it  is  pertinent  to  give  those  early  notes  of  mine  here, 


MODERNITY,  PAINT,  CARNIVAL     67 

the  more  so  as  they  stir  in  many  ways  artistic  com- 
parisons that  are  not  without  profit. 

It  was  the  first  time  the  Secessionists  of  Berlin 
showed  their  work  in  the  new  building  on  the  Ku'r- 
fuersten  Damm.  I  went,  in  despair  at  the  nullity  of  the 
convenional  Salons,  expecting  such  comfort  as,  in 
earlier  years,  the  Secession  had  given  me  through 
triumphs  by  Rodin,  and  the  loaned  wonders  of  Manet 
and  Monet.  But  horror  was  now  piled  on  horror; 
the  wildest  freaks  of  woolwork,  of  purples,  of  green 
and  of  saffron  anatomy,  of  sheer  ugliness  and  folly, 
ruthlessly  committed  for  their  own  sakes.  Yet  all 
was  not  a  void.  A  notable  trio  still  claimed  my  de- 
light. That  delight  I  set  down.  It  follows  here : 

"At  least  three  men  remain  notable — Franz  Stuck 
and  Koloman  Moser,  each  long  since  famous,  and 
Gustav  Klimt,  a  new  man.  Professor  Moser  again 
shows  us  specimens  of  jewelry  and  metal  work  that 
make  us  eternally  dissatisfied  with  all  that  our  home 
shops  show  us.  And  of  Stuck,  here  is  again  his  fa- 
mous 'Sphinx.'  Nothing  new  to  say  of  this  master- 
piece in  the  allegory  of  flesh;  cruel  still  those  hard 
breasts ;  cold  still  that  lowering  face,  promising  volup- 
tuousness, and  assuring  destruction.  New  canvases, 
by  Stuck,  are  two.  One  shows  Susanna  at  the  Bath, 
the  tawny  girl  curtaining  herself  against  the  senile 
eyes  of  the  bearded  watchers.  The  other  shows  a 
Fight  for  the  Female.  As  combatants,  two  hairy, 
barbarian  males;  as  prize  and  judge,  a  woman.  The 
combatants  are  crouched  toward  each  other;  their 
eyes  glitter  brutally,  their  naked  hands  curl  to  claws; 
all  their  muscles  quiver  in  rage  and  lust;  the  very  hair 
of  their  beards  and  their  naked  bodies  takes  on  the 


68  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

air  of  bristles.  Beside  them,  disdainful,  at  once  the 
prize  and  the  princess,  the  lady  of  battles  and  the  bat- 
tle's booty,  stands  the  woman,  tawny,  sombre,  cruel, 
the  same  woman  of  the  same  artist's  'Sphinx,'  repell- 
ing, yet  attractive,  like  a  dark,  alluring  vice.  Un- 
couth, brutal,  barbarian,  the  picture  reminds  of  Rops ; 
against  the  exquisitely  sharpened  wit  of  the  Flemish 
master  you  have  the  hard  animality  of  the  Teuton. 

"Finally,  one  new  man  to  be  noted  internationally, 
Gustav  Klimt.  A  curious  craft,  his.  A  roomful  of 
his  work  displays  his  heights,  his  depths.  Women, 
all  women.  A  method,  if  one  must  attempt  compari- 
son, compound  of  Mucha  and  Botticelli.  Do  you  re- 
call, perchance,  the  glorious  golden  panels  that  Al- 
phonse  Mucha  wasted  upon  the  world's  walls  some 
years  ago  in  advertisement  of  Bernhardt's  'Gis- 
monda?'  Well,  in  much  that  fashion  are  wrought 
the  best  of  these  decorative  canvases  by  Klimt.  There 
is  much  gold  and  mosaic  color  in  the  background, 
much  tenuous  vapor  in  the  figures  themselves,  a  trans- 
parency and  vagueness  that  is  as  if  a  girl  of  Botticelli 
were  seen  through  the  thin  translucent  glass  of  a  bowl 
by  Alexander.  These  are  slim  gilt  souls  that  shine 
through  slim  gilt  bodies.  In  several  of  the  canvases 
only  the  vagueness  and  the  thinness  remain;  but  in 
one,  at  least,  a  definite  result  shines  clear.  This  is  in 
the  canvas  showing  Judith.  The  triumphant  Jewess, 
most  wonderfully  vivified,  with  lids  half  shut,  the 
upper  lip  lifted  to  disdain  and  to  triumph,  in  her  hand 
the  head  of  Holofernes.  A  trite  enough  subject. 
But  for  once  this  artist  has  shown  that  through  his 
vapors,  his  gilt,  his  decorative  mosaics  and  his  flow- 
ing lines  of  supple  limbs,  he  can  call  forth  a  real  soul." 


MODERNITY,  PAINT,  CARNIVAL     69 

To-day  not  only  Klimt,  but  many  other  whilom 
Secessionists  hang  upon  the  walls  of  Pinakothek. 
(About  Klimt,  by  the  way,  I  hold  it  a  pity  that  only 
through  a  luxurious  and  expensive  portfolio  issued  by 
Miethke  of  Vienna  are  his  newer  designs  to  be  seen. 
He  rarely  exhibits,  and  reproductions  are  barred  by 
the  firm  just  named.)  The  story  of  youth  rebellious, 
old  age  conservative,  repeats  itself  in  every  century, 
and  it  is  emphasized  especially  now  by  the  fact  that  in 
Munich  the  artists  of  the  Secession  no  longer  hold 
their  exhibit  apart  from  the  academic  Salon;  the  two 
bodies  now  exhibit  amicably  together. 

Since  all  this  breaking  away  from  established  aca- 
demic groups,  all  this  secession  and  all  the  coming  to- 
gether again  has  taken  place  in  one  generation,  it  is 
interesting  to  note  how  in  each  recurring  annual  ex- 
hibition of  paintings  in  Munich,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
New  Pinakothek  itself,  the  work  of  former  Secession- 
ists may  be  found.  Of  these  are  Adolf  Muenzer, 
Max  Slevogt,  Louis  Corinth.  (Decorations  of 
Muenzer,  as  of  another  artist  familiar  to  readers  of 
Jugend,  Julius  Diez,  fill  much  space  in  the  Kur- 
haus  in  Wiesbaden,  affording  an  interesting  contrast 
to  the  methods  of  our  own  Abbey,  Sargent  or  Par- 
rish.)  Of  the  Slevogt  portrait  of  Tilla  Durieux 
which  I  remarked  as  notable  when  I  saw  it  in  that 
Munich  gallery  I  was  sharply  reminded  when  the 
Pdw-Jagow-Flaubert  incident  set  all  Germany  laugh- 
ing in  the  spring  of  1911.  Berlin's  Police  President, 
it  will  be  recalled,  censored  the  issue  of  Pan  print- 
ing pages  from  an  early  diary  of  Flaubert;  shortly 
afterwards,  watching,  in  his  capacity  as  stage  censor, 
a  rehearsal,  Herr  von  Jagow  takes  a  fancy  to  his 


70  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

neighbor,  the  actress  Tilla  Durieux;  he  writes  her  a 
note,  underscoring  his  official  interest  in  the  theater, 
and  wishes  to  be  asked  to  her  apartment  that  after- 
noon. Tilla  Durieux,  as  all  Berlin  but  Herr  von 
Jagow  knew,  is  the  wife  of  the  millionaire  owner  of 
the  just  suppressed  Pan!  Amid  the  roars  of 
laughter,  I  thought  of  the  Slevogt  portrait  of  the 
Durieux  that  had  been  in  Munich.  Nor  was  that, 
for  me,  the  end  of  the  incident;  Herr  von  Jagow's 
rancor  was  not  stilled;  he  suppressed,  presently,  an- 
other issue  of  Pan,  to  which  I,  following  a  kindly 
suggestion  of  Dr.  Alfred  Kerr's,  was  a  contributor. 
Not  my  article,  however,  but  one  by  Herbert  Eulen- 
berg,  offended  Von  Jagow's  nicety  on  that  occasion. 
To  Herr  von  Jagow  I  must  ever  feel  grateful.  He 
gave  me,  by  the  colossal  mistake  he  made,  one  of  the 
heartiest  laughs  in  my  life,  and  he  helped  something 
of  my  writing  into  the  rare  field  of  confiscation. 

ON  the  board  of  directors  of  the  Secessionists  are 
to-day  such  men  as  Von  Stuck,  Angelo  Jank,  Von  Kel- 
ler and  Von  Habermann.  Von  Keller  is  portraitist; 
Jank  paints  horses  and  cavalrymen.  It  is  Hugo  von 
Habermann  whose  work  is  least  known  abroad.  Se- 
cessionist once,  now  one  of  the  grand  old  men  of  Ger- 
man art.  With  the  Von  Kellers,  the  Muenzers,  the 
Stucks  and  the  Lenbachs,  some  of  his  canvases  hang 
in  the  New  Pinakothek.  One  year  I  was  fortunate 
enough  to  see  in  Munich  a  three-man  show,  in  which 
Von  Habermann  was  represented  by  no  less  than  one 
hundred  and  thirty-odd  canvases. 

From  all  these,  too  many,  pictures  this  seemed  to 
cry  out  most  loudly:  Here  is  a  great  master  of  male 


MODERNITY,  PAINT,  CARNIVAL     71 

portraiture  who  has  chosen  all  his  life  to  paint 
women.  You  could  number  the  men  portrayed  on 
your  fingers;  the  female  faces  and  forms  were  tiring 
to  count.  Women,  many  women,  dressed  and  un- 
dressed, this  painter  has  painted.  He  gives  you 
mostly  dark  figures  who  are  by  no  means  beautiful, 
but  in  whom  there  is  always  some  definite  trait  of 
character  or  suggestion.  Yellows,  roses  and  violets 
he  loves  in  his  handling  of  stuffs.  He  paints  the  fe- 
male form  as  critic  rather  than  as  lover.  In  a  touch 
of  characteristic  profile  he  finds  his  delight,  and  even 
exaggerates  it  toward  caricature.  For  40  years  he 
has  been  a  growing  dominant  figure  in  German  art. 
In  his  early  pictures,  done  in  the  seventies,  you  will 
find  the  tendencies  of  the  earliest  Secessionists.  Even 
then  he  was  himself  a  Secessionist,  in  that  he  never 
went  the  academic  way. 

Those  essential  characteristics  of  his  that  deprive 
his  women  of  beauty  while  accentuating  their  anatom- 
ical ruggedness  go  exactly  to  the  strengthening  of  his 
portraits  of  men.  Working  always  in  swift  strokes 
that  give  many  of  his  canvases  the  effect  of  sketches, 
one  conceives  his  painting  mood  to  have  been  an  iron- 
ically grim  realism.  One  does  not  know  whether  most 
to  admire  the  consistency  with  which  he  made  all  his 
subjects  angular  in  contour  and  expression,  or  to  won- 
der where  he  found  so  many  models  to  his  unsparing 
hand.  For  German  women,  after  all,  are  not  like 
that.  One  must  not  expect,  of  course,  mere  Germans 
from  a  German ;  but  it  does  arrest  one  a  little  to  note 
how,  in  a  lifetime  of  work,  this  German  seems  never 
once  to  have  departed  from  depicting  the  type  he  had 
chosen  from  the  first.  Only  once,  perhaps,  does  he 


72  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

approach  the  fat-cheeked  teuton  type  as  popularly 
imagined;  in  his  "Maid  in  the  Open"  he  shows  a  girl 
thick-lipped  and  almost  heavy  with  passion.  Mostly, 
however,  we  see,  over  and  over  again,  those  sharp 
lines,  sharp  features,  sharp  elbows;  everything  sharp; 
blues  and  purples  too  sharp  upon  the  flesh-tints; 
women  who  are  sometimes  provoking,  but  nearly 
always  ugly;  women  naked  and  women  clothed; 
women — hardly  anything  but  women.  A  nude  by 
Von  Habermann  reminds  the  observer  of  little  save 
the  old  paganism,  to  the  effect  that  the  boy's  body  is 
more  beautiful  than  the  girl's. 

At  least  twice  Habermann  approaches  perilously 
close  to  methods  that  Whistler  made  his  own.  Once 
in  No.  6  of  the  year  1875,  called  "The  Nun."  The 
black-robed  figure,  shading  imperceptibly  into  the 
gray  background;  the  silhoutted  face  that  might  be 
mistaken  for  a  man's;  these  all  recall  Whistler  irre- 
sistibly. Again,  almost  to  the  butterfly,  almost  to  the 
framed  picture  hung  in  the  left  upper  corner,  almost 
to  the  very  title,  indeed,  there  is  Habermann's  "Por- 
trait of  the  Artist's  Mother."  The  old  lady  lives  and 
smiles  at  you ;  she  is  more  in  the  foreground  than  in 
the  famous  Whistler  canvas;  yet  to  miss  the  compar- 
ison is  impossible.  Habermann  must  have  dared  his 
trick  intentionally;  so  great  a  master  of  technique 
would  scorn  to  fear  the  parallel.  With  the  best  in- 
tentions, however,  the  German  has  failed  to  make  a 
picture  that  will  keep  as  placid  a  charm,  as  vigorous 
a  strength  as  that  noble  picture  in  the  Luxembourg. 
Tricks  in  technique  have  always  delighted  this  mas- 
ter; the  two  most  arresting  nudes  he  has  done  are  his 
"Nude  in  Green"  and  his  "Remorse."  In  this  latter 


MODERNITY,  PAINT,  CARNIVAL     73 

picture  those  qualities  of  his  which  may  have  affected 
the  observer  unpleasantly  hardly  count  at  all,  for  the 
reason  that  the  figure  is  shown  with  its  face  hidden 
and  buried  in  the  pillows  of  a  couch;  the  back  of  the 
figure  seems  perfect  in  anatomy,  and  even  the  angu- 
larities typical  of  this  painter  emphasize,  in  this  case, 
the  peculiar  tragedy  of  the  situation.  The  very  shad- 
ows in  the  neck  and  the  shoulder  help  the  text  the  pic- 
ture is  intended  to  convey. 

Perhaps  it  is  the  consensus  of  opinion  that  Von 
Habermann  is  a  great  painter  of  women.  I  conclude 
otherwise.  I  hold  him  a  fine  painter  of  men  who  has 
wasted  himself  on  women.  As  for  his  models,  they 
have  proved  that  it  is  possible  to  be  interesting  with- 
out being  beautiful.  Of  the  German  female  figure,  it 
is  as  interesting  and  individual  an  impression  that  one 
gains  in  this  man's  work  as,  say,  from  the  work  of  the 
late  F.  von  Reznicek.  If  Von  Habermann  seems  to 
intend  to  give  us  the  idea  that  the  female  form  is  sim- 
ply an  anatomical  study  in  angles,  Von  Reznicek  for 
years  imposed  upon  the  world  at  large  a  fantastic  ver- 
sion of  feminine  beauty  to  which  the  facts  never  cor- 
responded. 

THE  case  of  the  late  Von  Reznicek  leads  immedi- 
ately to  the  great  gulf  fixed  between  the  Munich  car- 
nival of  fact  and  the  carnival  of  fancy.  Even  so,  the 
actual  Maxim's  in  Paris  is  a  distinct  disenchantment 
to  those  who  have  known  only  the  Maxim's  of  legend. 
For  years  a  group  of  artists  with  headquarters  in 
Munich,  Von  Reznicek  at  the  head,  has  been  filling 
the  world  with  a  notion  of  the  gayety  and  charm  of 
Munich  in  the  season  of  carnival,  which  has  attracted 


74  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

and  fascinated  wherever  seen.  Neither  the  beauty 
nor  the  so-called  bohemianism  of  Paris  ever  presented 
greater  freedom  from  conventional  restraints,  or  a 
higher  average  of  feminine  beauty.  Arresting  in  out- 
line, impeccable  in  drawing  and  fascinating  in  color, 
the  sketches  were  absolutely  the  world's  models  of 
carnival  gayety. 

Two  years  ago  Von  Reznicek  died.  The  volumes 
of  Simplicissimus,  and  particularly  the  special  num- 
bers devoted  to  carnival  during  the  last  10  years  con- 
tained abundant  proofs  of  the  truth  of  the  assertion 
that  this  Hungarian  artist  drew  from  fancy  rather 
than  from  fact.  In  the  very  fact  of  his  Hungarian 
nationality  lies  the  crux  of  the  argument.  He  was 
painting  always  the  Viennese  girl  whom  best  he  loved, 
rather  than  the  Munich  girls  who  were  pretended  as 
his  subjects.  And  out  of  what  actuality  does  the  Mar- 
quis Franz  de  Bayros  draw  those  wonderful  women 
which  he  repeats  over  and  over  for  our  somewhat  dis- 
turbed delight?  They  are  as  shepherdesses  of  Wat- 
teau  or  Sevres;  they  go  as  daintily  as  verses  of  De 
Musset  or  Dobson,  and  they  are  more  shamelessly 
suggestive  than  Beardsley,  less  brutal  and  so  more 
dangerous  than  Rops.  The  man  cannot  draw  cor- 
rectly, and  yet  his  false  lines  have  an  allure  of  grace, 
of  charm,  and  of  mystery  that  almost  atones  for  what 
they  have  of  perversity.  One  thing  must  be  allowed 
De  Bayros,  he  has  no  superior  in  arrangement  of 
skirts  and  frou-frous,  in  multiplying  adornment  which 
yet  hides  nothing.  His  ladies  are  like  those  who  in 
the  longest  of  skirts,  the  most  voluminous  of  laces, 
suddenly  kick  you  the  most  astounding  can-can,  flash- 
ing at  you  all  that  seemed  so  completely  hidden.  No 


MODERNITY,  PAINT,  CARNIVAL     75 

beauty  of  the  Pompadour  period  had  ever  fairer  form 
under  fairer  raiment  than  these  of  De  Bayros,  whose 
bookplates  alone  will  keep  his  name  sweet,  even  if 
much  of  his  art  is  by  no  means  of  the  sweetest.  Now, 
in  what  corner  of  Munich  does  De  Bayros  find  his 
models  ?  No,  no ;  it  is  all  artistic  glamour ;  the  eye  of 
the  beholder.  Most  stupendous  of  follies,  to  seek 
always  the  explanation  of  an  art,  the  originals  for  a 
story,  the  models  for  a  picture;  to  think  that  a  writer 
is  to  be  found  in  his  work.  Child's  play,  stuff  for  im- 
mature minds,  whatever  their  age.  Not  even  in  car- 
nival, when  Munich  does  its  best  to  be  gay,  to  be  ro- 
mantic, to  be  beautiful,  are  these  lovely  ladies  of  Von 
Reznicek,  of  De  Bayros  and  of  half  a  dozen  others 
to  be  seen. 

Actual  experiences  of  the  carnival  in  Munich — or, 
as  the  Muenchener  himself  calls  it,  "Fasching" — 
proves  that  all  this  artistic  glamour,  and  almost  all 
of  this  feminine  beauty,  exists  entirely  in  the  eye  of 
the  beholder.  The  population  of  Munich  goes  about 
the  business  of  carnival  gayety  with  a  determination 
that  is  admirable,  but  which  does  not  lift  either  male 
or  female  from  an  inherent  bourgeoisie.  You  see 
the  streets  filled  almost  every  night  for  the  weeks  be- 
fore Mardi  Gras  with  men  and  women,  old  and 
young,  fantastically  arrayed,  and  bound  for  balls,  for 
masquerades  or  other  timely  festivals;  but  those  ar- 
resting beauties,  those  fashion  plates,  those  fascinat- 
ing forms  in  dress  and  undress  which  the  artists  have 
for  years  been  giving  us  as  typical  of  the  time  and  the 
place — those  do  not  exist.  Even  at  the  Deutsche 
Theater,  at  the  Bal  Pare,  while  you  see  a  welter  of 
women  as  gay  as  impertinent,  as  thirsty,  as  light  of 


76  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

feet  and  doubtless  of  morals  as  the  most  epicurean 
might  wish,  yet  the  world  they  represent  is  artistically 
far  below  that  world  this  group  of  artists  has  con- 
spired to  fashion.  In  this  group,  besides  those  names 
have  been  Galanis,  Kley,  Heilemann  and  many 
others.  Most  of  them,  as  has  been  said,  have  im- 
posed their  memories  of  Hungarian,  of  Viennese,  of 
Polish,  and  of  Parisian  compatriots  upon  the  world. 

That  gulf  between  the  physical  exterior  of  the 
population  of  Munich  and  its  artistic  interest  remains 
one  of  the  mysteries  hard  for  the  alien  to  solve. 
Munich  discusses  everything  artistic  under  the  sun, 
the  Wagner  or  Mozart  festivals,  the  singing  at  Bay- 
reuth,  the  playing  of  the  peasants  in  the  Ammergau, 
the  spectacles  of  Max  Reinhardt,  the  anecdotes  of 
Roda  Roda,  the  newest  operetta  at  the  Theater  an 
der  Wien  or  on  the  Gaertner  Platz,  the  pictures — 
those  thousands  of  pictures,  new  and  old,  which  sur- 
round us  always  in  Munich.  It  discusses  all  these 
things,  and  meanwhile  every  other  male  in  Munich 
looks  like  a  butcher  or  a  beer  keg,  and  every  other 
female  like  a  cook..  The  miracle  of  how  the  Bava- 
rian beauty  manages  by  inartistic  apparel  to  defeat 
the  ends  of  nature  may  be  solved  when  we  discover 
how  the  Munich  artists,  facing  the  awful  facts,  con- 
tinue to  present  those  fascinating  visions  of  theirs. 

For  the  ironic  contemplation  carnival,  whether  in 
Paris,  in  New  Orleans,  in  Mobile,  in  Monte  Carlo  or 
in  Munich,  tends  necessarily  to  disenchantment.  That 
the  real  spirit  of  the  real  article  exists  best  in  Munich 
there  can  be  as  little  denying  as  that  this  same  best  is 
still  far  behind  the  artist's  version.  The  very  fact, 
however,  that  the  Munich  carnival  has  stimulated  so 


MODERNITY,  PAINT,  CARNIVAL     77 

much  memorable  art,  not  only  in  the  world  of  paint, 
but  in  literature,  as  in  the  pantomimes  of  O.  J.  Bier- 
baum,  proves  the  sincerity  and  value  of  this  carnival 
spirit.  When  Frank  Wedekind  wrote  an  obvious 
sketch  of  Von  Reznicek  in  his  curious  play,  "Oaha," 
he  added  merely  one  more  line  for  the  future  histo- 
rian of  the  South  German  art  movements  to  record. 
The  Munich  population  itself  may  look  like — well, 
what  it  does  look  like ;  the  Munich  police  may  try,  by 
forbidding  dominos  at  masked  balls,  or  curtains  be- 
fore chambres  separees,  or  by  suggesting  an  amuse- 
ment tax,  to  damp  the  ardor  of  this  carnival  spirit, 
yet  it  remains  with  all  its  disenchantments  one  of  the 
things  in  the  modern  world  most  worth  while  having 
tasted.  None  that  has  come  under  spell  either  of  the 
carnival  itself  or  of  the  art  it  has  called  forth  in 
Munich  will  ever  readily  forget  either. 

II 

ILLUSTRATIONS    AND    POSTERS 

ALL  the  arts  touch  one  another;  one  incites  the 
other;  the  temptation  to  wander  from  studios  to  the- 
aters, from  paintings  to  plays  or  music  or  books  is 
constantly  harassing  the  critic.  As  a  mere  mundane 
mood  like  carnival  (though  some  of  its  beginnings  are 
in  things  professedly  not  mundane)  has  stimulated 
paint,  and  literature  and  pantomime,  as  I  pointed  out 
just  now,  so  do  all  these  paintings  that  are  spread  be- 
fore us  in  Munich  start  constant  reflections  upon  kin- 
dred arts.  Yet,  before  I  come  to  any  of  these,  there 
remain  two  details  that  seem  valuable  to  art  lovers. 


78  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

One  concerns  the  art  of  the  affiche,  or  artistic  poster; 
the  other  is  about  various  inexpensive  forms  of  art  that 
even  the  poorest  amateur  should  be  able  to  afford. 

Few  visitors  to  Munich  are  aware  that  an  annual 
event  there  is  the  auction  of  the  originals  used  by  that 
most  celebrated  of  artistic  weeklies,  Jugend.  Inti- 
macy with  the  contributors  to  the  early  volumes  of 
that  paper  means  intimacy  with  painters  who  are  to- 
day upon  the  wralls  of  the  Pinakothek.  I  emphasize 
this,  lest  pseudo-artistic  snobs  suppose  these  drawings 
and  sketches  of  little  value.  In  nothing  is  good  taste 
so  profitable  as  in  art !  You  must  have  courage,  and 
taste,  a  generation  before  the  world's  chorus  begins. 
There  is  the  whole  secret.  It  is  true  the  work  sold  in 
one  of  these  auctions  partake  largely  of  caricature, 
besides  having  the  defect  of  showing  that  it  has  been 
prepard  for  reproduction;  as  in  so  many  cases  where 
artists  work  for  engraving,  or  lithograph,  or  color- 
printing,  the  print  shows  none  of  the  crudities  of  the 
original.  Nevertheless,  if  Americans  who  wish  to 
decorate  their  apartments,  their  little  houses,  their 
bungalows,  or  even  their  town  houses,  inexpensively 
and  yet  artistically,  would  make  a  point  of  going  to 
Munich  every  spring  and  attending  those  auction 
sales  there  they  would  be  able  to  have  on  their  walls 
something  better  than  the  Gibson,  and  Fisher,  and 
Christy  prints  they  now  enjoy,  in  community  with  a 
few  other  million  amateurs  of  the  same  taste.  Those 
color  sketches,  for  purposes  of  print  in  that  Munich 
periodical,  are,  after  all,  actual  originals.  The  same 
thing  may  be  said  of  the  color  etchings  which  distin- 
guished artists  all  over  Europe  are  now  beginning 
more  and  more  to  produce.  The  small  householder 


MODERNITY,  PAINT,  CARNIVAL     79 

and  art  lover  pays  for  a  color  etching  by  a  good  artist 
about  one-tenth  of  what  he  would  have  to  pay  for  an 
original;  yet  he  knows  that  only  a  limited  number  of 
other  copies  exist  and  that  the  artist  has  signed  each 
copy.  Only  in  the  last  two  or  three  years  has  any 
effort  been  made  in  America  to  emphasize  the  value 
and  delight  of  this  form  of  art.  Some  of  us  have  not 
visited  Paris  ever,  in  the  last  decade,  without  acquir- 
ing at  least  one  such  treasure.  They  do  not  cost  more 
than  some  men  pay  for  a  dinner.  In  Paris  the  names 
of  Laffitte,  of  Robbe,  of  Osterlind,  of  Mueller,  of 
Willette,  are  specially  connected  with  this  form  of 
art,  and  the  wonderful  landscapes  of  Thoma  are 
hardly  equalled  even  by  an  original  oil  or  water  color. 
In  Munich  the  show  of  this  branch  of  art  is  increas- 
ing. T.  Franz  Simon  of  Paris  has  done  color  etch- 
ings. Such  of  them  as  portray  scenes  and  moods  of 
Paris  are  worth  attention,  but  his  sketch  of  Hyde 
Park  in  London  too  clearly  reveals  the  haziness  of  his 
method.  One  sees  in  that  etching  too  vividly  that  he 
does  not  know  good  horseflesh  or  accoutrement  when 
he  sees  it.  One  or  two  Austriaris,  as  F.  Michl  of 
Vienna  and  August  Broemse  of  Prag,  have  taken  up 
this  branch,  as  have  Axel  Krause  of  Copenhagen, 
Henri  Forrestier  of  Geneva  and  Alexander  Lieb- 
mann  of  Munich;  but  in  most  cases  one  can  admire 
little  save  the  evidence  that  these  artists  are  alive  to 
this  essentially  modern  method  of  supplying  actual 
original  art  to  that  portion  of  the  public  which  cannot 
afford  paintings.  In  Florence,  I  remember,  we  had 
looked  in  vain,  and  only  found  one  single  artist,  a 
woman,  M.  de  Cordoba,  attempting  color  etchings, 
and  in  Venice  it  had  not  been  much  better;  there  the 


8o  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

sum  total  was  two  artists  who  had  reproduced  the  in- 
evitable lagoon  and  gondolier. 

The  similar  art  of  color  etching  from  wood  cuts 
seems,  in  the  Munich  show  of  this  year,  to  be  largely 
chosen  by  women  artists.  Broncia  Pinell-Koller  of 
Vienna,  Anne  Poll  of  Miinchen,  Louis  Pollitzer  of 
Miinchen,  Anna  Ostroumowa-Lebeddewa  of  St. 
Petersburg  and  Dora  Seifert  of  Dresden — these 
were  the  foremost  in  this  art  patterned  after 
the  old  Japanese  methods.  In  America  this  art 
is  still  in  its  infancy.  There  was  a  Norwegian 
painter  in  Chicago,  whose  name  will  not  come  at 
this  moment's  bidding,  and  there  was  once  an  exhibi- 
tion of  a  few  specimens  by  F.  A.  Nankivell  on  Fifth 
avenue,  but  to  all  intents  this  other,  with  that  of  color 
etching  from  copper,  is  still  a  virgin  field  on  our  side. 
All  these  forms  of  art,  color  etchings  from  wood  or 
metal,  sketches  done  for  illustration,  and  the  rest,  are 
inexpensive  and  genuine. 

THERE  remain  those  posters  which  in  design  and 
execution  are  artistic.  Some  years  ago  England  and 
America  took  up  the  collecting  of  these,  and  it  looked 
for  a  time  as  if  the  whole  tone  of  pictorial  advertising 
would  improve.  But  there  has  come  a  reaction,  so 
that  once  again  only  France,  Italy  and  Germany  offer 
the  passer-by  posters  from  which,  if  he  have  any  fine 
taste,  he  will  not  hurry  away  as  fast  as  possible.  It 
is  by  its  posters,  even  if  one  avoids  galleries  and 
museums  on  principle,  that  Munich  proclaims  imme- 
diately to  the  visitor  its  supremacy  as  an  art  center. 
Here,  again,  I  had  the  frightful  contrast  hit  me  like 
a  blow  when  I  reached  Munich  after  the  last  general 


MODERNITY,  PAINT,  CARNIVAL     81 

election  in  England.  Nothing  in  all  that  bitter  polit- 
ical struggle  had  been  more  awful  and  inartistic  than 
the  average  poster  used  on  the  hoardings.  Though 
literally  acres  of  space  must  have  been  used  through- 
out England  in  this  way,  so  that  for  the  time  being 
the  notoriety  of  soaps,  beers,  whiskies  and  actors  was 
obscured,  yet  there  was  not  one  single  work  of  art  in 
the  lot.  Crude  and  clumsy  depictions  of  melodra- 
matic texts;  flaring  letters  and  not  one  single  artistic 
line.  As  for  anything  signed  by  an  artist  of  any  dis- 
tinction, that  was  out  of  the  question.  One  had  to 
wonder,  recalling  the  work  such  men  as  Dudley 
Hardy,  the  Beggar-staffs,  Raven-Hill  and  many 
others  were  doing  ten  years  ago,  and  as  some  few, 
notably  Hassall,  are  still  doing  to-day,  why  the  men 
in  charge  of  political  parties  in  England  are  so  much 
more  stupid  than  the  men  in  charge  of  comic  operas, 
of  periodicals  and  of  champagne.  There  was  never  a 
campaign  in  which  the  assistance  of  the  English  silk- 
stocking  element  was  more  needed,  so  that  the  argu- 
ment about  the  need  for  only  the  workingman's  en- 
thusiasm falls  to  the  ground. 

The  first  quarter  of  an  hour  in  Munich  brought 
those  inartistic  London  memories  closer.  Here,  too, 
were  acres  of  space  covered,  but  by  posters  that  were 
almost  always  a  delight  to  contemplate.  You  were 
likely,  in  fact,  to  stop  and  examine  them  at  your  leis- 
ure. Whether,  for  art  shows,  for  American  bars,  for 
this  or  that  masked  ball,  or  cafe  or  restaurant,  the 
poster  itself  was  nearly  always  attractive,  of  manage- 
able size,  and  by  an  artist  who  had  not  been  afraid 
to  sign  his  name.  The  most  cursory  stroll  showed 
Adolf  Munzer's  three-sheet  for  the  Bals  Fare's  at  the 


82  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

German  Theater  that  carnival  season  (and  Miinzer  is 
now  prominent  on  the  walls  of  the  permanent  state- 
owned  academy  buildings  throughout  Germany)  and 
the  smaller  specimens  of  I.  R.  Wetzel  of  Jugend; 
of  Leo  Putz,  done  for  the  Modern  Gallery,  where  the 
strange  paintings  of  Max  Slevogt  are  on  view,  while 
for  such  institutions  as  the  Kunstverein,  the  Restau- 
rant Platzl,  the  carnival  dances  at  the  Colosseum,  the 
Carnival  Association  of  Munich,  the  Simplicissimus 
Masked  Ball  and  the  Simplicissimus  Bierhall,  the 
Casino  Bar,  the  Maxim  American  Bar,  and  the  Savoy 
Bar,  the  Dance  Festival  of  the  Suabian  Brewery,  the 
sporting  goods  shop  of  one  Wagner,  and  innumerable 
others,  there  were  posters,  often  charming,  always 
arresting  and  nearly  always  of  good  workmanship, 
by  such  signers  as  O.  Graf,  H.  Treiber,  Blecker,  Back- 
mund,  Kneip,  Meier  and  Treiber.  Finally,  there  was 
the  sphinx-like  head  framed  in  gold  mosaic  by  F.  von 
Stuck,  advertising  the  winter  show  of  the  Seces- 
sionists. 

With  that  poster  of  Stuck' s  we  come  back  to  the 
Secessionists,  you  see,  who  are  now  hand  in  glove  in 
amity  with  the  academicians.  We  are  whirling  once 
more  in  the  motor-car,  and  the  driver  is  pointing  out 
to  us  ...  I  ask  you  to  note  how  in  Munich  art 
dominates  everything.  Stray  as  you  will,  wander  into 
the  most  trivial  asides,  it  is  to  art  we  return.  For 
Munich  is  the  greatest,  the  freest  of  all  art  towns. 
She  does  not  so  much  compel  as  lure. 


MODERNITY,  PAINT,  CARNIVAL     83 
III 

ART   AND   THE    OPEN-AIR   THEATER 

EYES  tired,  feet  sore,  lungs  choked  on  air  breathed 
over  and  over  again,  even  the  most  devoted  art  lovers 
greet  with  relief  the  passing  from  picture  galleries 
into  fresh  air.  Let  us  take  a  whiff  of  fresh  air  1  Fresh 
air  in  art,  bribe  me  properly  and  I  will  write  you  a 
book  upon  that.  Neither  through  literature,  nor  gal- 
leries, nor  the  theater  does  fresh  air  blow  as  it  should. 
Wilde  cultivated  literature  without  it;  Nietzsche 
might  not  have  gone  mad  so  soon  if  in  his  philosophy 
and  his  life  there  had  been  more  outdoor  ozone.  .  .  . 
I  am  coming,  thus  leisurely,  to  that  fascinating  theme, 
the  open-air  theater.  It  has  interested  me  as  much 
as  the  more  heralded  business  at  Bayreuth,  or  the 
Passion  Play.  To  all  these  you  come  easily  and  logic- 
ally from  Munich,  and  the  pedigree  of  the  open-air 
theater  movement  may  be  traced  to  Oberammergau, 
to  various  lesser  known  villages  in  the  Bavarian  high- 
lands, in  Bohemia,  and  in  Tyrol.  There  native  tradi- 
tion and  legend  have  succeeded  in  keeping  something 
of  Homeric  peasant-lore  and  natural  sense  of  drama 
intact.  From  such  beginnings  eventually  developed 
the  serious  evolution  toward  the  open-air  theater. 

All  the  arts  touch;  I  say  it  again.  Fresh  air  in  all 
the  arts  I  That  has  been  my  cry  in  many  times  and 
places.  Some  years  ago,  when  the  art  colony  at 
Lyme,  in  Connecticut,  was  just  born,  I  aroused  the 
laughter  of  some  of  those  painting  persons  by  con- 
tending that,  for  the  decoration  of  town  mansions 
only  one  sort  of  picture,  or  one  sort  of  landscape,  was 


84  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

fit,  namely,  that  showing  clear  sunlight  and  fresh  air. 
Town  houses  are  dark  and  shadowy  places;  put  into 
them  a  Troyon,  a  Corot,  or  even  an  Inness,  and,  un- 
less it  is  a  proper  gallery  with  north  light  or  glassed 
roofs,  you  are  but  adding  darkness  unto  darkness. 
The  further  I  fare,  the  more  I  uphold  that  theory  of 
mine.  The  open-air  theater  in  Germany  has  fixed  me 
in  my  belief. 

It  may  clear  the  air  a  little  to  touch  upon  the  title 
of  this  form  of  theater.  Heretofore,  in  English,  we 
have  gone  to  the  rococo  Italian  phrase  "al  fresco. " 
Just  as  we  have  gone  to  the  Greeks  and  the  Latins  for 
our  stadiums  and  our  amphitheaters.  The  German 
has  gone,  it  seems  to  me,  to  the  French  for  his  title. 
He  has  taken  the  "plein  air"  of  the  landscape  paint- 
ers, the  impressionists,  the  vibrationists,  and  all  the 
rest  of  them,  and  he  has  called  his  new  art  form  "Die 
Freilicht-Biihne,"  which  is,  literally,  "plein  air,"  or 
"free-light  stage ;"  and  the  best  word  of  our  own  that 
we  can  give  is,  I  maintain,  simply  the  open-air  theater. 
The  most  definite  meaning  lies  in  that  phrase;  the 
whole  setting  of  the  art,  and  the  whole  art  itself,  is 
most  clearly  so  expressed. 

Let  me  apologize  a  little  to  our  friends,  the  Ger- 
mans, for  having,  in  times  past,  accused  their  drama 
of  a  lack  of  fresh  air.  Some  of  them,  through  this 
fresh-air  movement  we  are  now  regarding,  have  come 
to  realize  what  was  the  matter.  Year  after  year  it 
was  my  habit  to  return  from  Germanic  theaters  with 
my  most  poignant  memory  having  to  do  with 
crowded,  tight-shut,  stuffy  theaters,  in  which  stuffy, 
unnatural  art  got  iself  performed.  One  year  I  went 
so  far  as  to  say  that  the  German  theater  would  never 


MODERNITY,  PAINT,  CARNIVAL     85 

progress  as  long  as  it  went  on  breathing  foul  air.  The 
average  German  theater  was  as  impervious  to  ozone 
as  the  average  railway  compartment  in  which  the 
majority  is  German. 

I  do  not  say  that  criticism  from  Anglo-Saxons  had 
anything  to  do  with  it.  The  Teuton  is  still  somewhat 
inclined  to  regard  anything  save  the  bombastic  as  be- 
ing mere  airy  journalistic  nothing.  But  the  fact  re- 
mains: To-day  the  open-air  theater  movement  is  a 
most  conspicuous  and  interesting  artistic  detail  in  all 
Germany.  In  the  open  air,  in  fresh  ozone,  and  in  the 
natural  decoration  of  the  unaltered  landscape,  dra- 
matic art  in  Germany  has  at  last  sought  refuge  from 
the  sudden  closed  spaces  in  which  too  long  it  had  been 
confined.  The  progressing  theory  that  we  should 
live  more  and  more  outdoors,  should  eat  and  drink 
and  sleep  winter  and  summer  outdoors,  has  extended 
itself  to  the  art  of  the  theater,  until  we  have  this  pres- 
ent, definite,  distinct  cult. 

While  in  America  this  tendency  takes  hold  slowly, 
and  but  casually,  as  in  the  case  of  Maude  Adams,  or 
the  sylvan  spectacles  of  the  Bohemian  Club  of  San 
Francisco,  in  Europe,  and  especially  in  German- 
speaking  countries,  the  open-air  theater  is  spreading 
its  influence  farther  and  farther.  All  such  outdoor 
performances  are  within  easy  reach  of  the  ordinary 
traveler,  all  with  regular  repertoires,  and  all  well 
worth  special  trips.  Whoso  loves  the  drama  for  its 
own  sake,  aside  from  social  or  snobbish  calculations, 
should  not  return  from  Europe  without  having  vis- 
ited one  or  another  of  these  open-air  theaters.  Among 
those  in  continuous  operation  are  theaters  in  Thale, 
in  the  Hartz  Mountains;  in  Nerothal,  near  Wies- 


86  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

baden,  and  at  Castle  Hertenstein,  near  Lucerne.  The 
theater  in  the  Hartz  has  been  giving  its  performances 
for  no  less  than  eight  summers  past.  Those  near 
Wiesbaden  and  Lucerne  date  only  from  Whitsuntide 
of  1909.  In  Orange,  and  elsewhere  in  France;  in 
the  Arena  Goldoni,  in  Florence,  and  many  other 
spots,  these  episodes  in  outdoor  drama  have  occurred. 
I  must,  however,  content  myself  with  but  one  part  of 
the  field,  and  choose  there  one  typical  instance. 

THE  main  point  that  has  so  far  developed  from 
such  experiments  by  the  Germans  is  that  the  classic 
drama  of  the  Greeks  and  of  the  giants  like  Shakes- 
peare and  Goethe  best  lends  itself  to  this  setting.  Es- 
sentials are  unity  of  scene,  and  primitive  expression. 
Large  elemental  emotions  come  to  their  fullest  value 
under  these  circumstances.  Natural  men  and  women 
may  be  successfully  presented;  finesse  and  delicate 
shading  fall  flat.  The  plays  should  be  such  as  to  im- 
press the  far  spectator  who  has  not  clearly  heard  the 
speech  itself.  Great  legends,  plays  of  great  histor- 
ical or  internationally  symbolic  significance,  are  the 
ones  most  chosen.  These  were  the  plays  performed 
at  Thale  in  the  Hartz,  though  also  modern  matter 
was  included,  as  may  be  seen  from  this  partial  list  of 
the  repertoire  for  1909:  Heinrich  von  Kleist's 
"Herrmannsschlacht;"  Hebbel's  "Gygest  and  His 
Ring;"  Hauptmann's  uThe  Sunken  Bell;"  Suder- 
mann's  "Teja;"  in  addition  to  several  well-known 
Shakespeare  and  Ibsen  and  Goethe  pieces.  In  the 
Hartz  Theater,  moreover,  one  found  the  department 
of  farce  not  altogether  excluded,  as  it  is  on  the  other 
stages  of  this  sort. 


MODERNITY,  PAINT,  CARNIVAL     87 

Vitally  interesting  was  the  play  which  Ernst  von 
Wolzogen  specially  wrote  for  the  open-air  theater 
at  Nerothal,  near  Wiesbaden.  Its  name  was  "Die 
Maibraut"  ("The  May  Bride").  There  has  been  lit- 
tle in  the  conspicuous  liberalism  of  the  dramatic  arts 
in  Germany  during  the  past  two  decades  with  which 
Von  Wolzogen  has  not  had  something  to  do.  He 
has  written  librettos  and  composed  songs,  written 
novels  and  stories  and  serious  plays,  and  managed 
theaters,  and,  in  case  of  need,  acted  and  sung  in  his 
own  person. 

Now,  when  it  was  a  question  of  the  new  enterprise 
set  in  the  rocky  cleft  of  the  Nero  Valley,  near  Wies- 
baden, it  was  Von  Wolzogen  who  wrote  a  piece  to  fit 
the  occasion  like  a  glove.  He  took  for  his  text  cer- 
tain mythologic  or  legendary  revelations  of  Guido 
von  List  (great  in  Germanic  lore)  and  spun  out  of 
those  threads  a  great  symbolic  drama  in  which  the 
elements  of  light,  and  earth,  and  winter,  of  gods  and 
of  men  all  have  place  and  dramatic  force.  Tragedy 
and  comedy  in  their  most  elemental  expression  were 
used;  also  dances,  choruses  and  processionals,  so  that 
the  piece  gained  an  almost  operatic  largeness.  Herr 
Rother  composed  music  specially  for  the  play.  All 
this  against  the  massive  cloven  rocks  that  serve  as 
background  gained  an  almost  magic  effect.  The  piece 
was  an  unqualified  success  in  that  open-air  atmos- 
phere for  which  it  was  intended. 

Herr  von  Wolzogen,  then,  is  to  be  noted  as  the 
first  playwright  directly  to  write  for  this  newer  ver- 
sion of  the  open-air  theater.  Now  Wiesbaden  offers 
a  prize  for  the  play  given  at  Nerothal,  and  in  addi- 
tion to  the  present  theater  among  the  rocks,  a  second 


88  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

smaller  stage  is  used  on  the  island  in  the  garden  of 
the  Kurhaus  in  Wiesbaden  itself. 

If  Von  Wolzogen  is  the  first  consciously  to  write 
a  piece  to  fit  this  new  development  in  theatric  art,  it 
should  not  be  forgotten  that  one  Friedrich  Lieland 
years  ago  wrote  a  play,  "Wieland  der  Schmied" 
( Wieland  the  Smith) ,  specially  with  a  view  to  its  per- 
formance in  such  surroundings  as  at  that  time  the 
Berg  Theater  (Mountain  Theater)  in  the  Hartz 
alone  exemplified.  Also  J.  V.  Widmann  wrote  a 
tragedy,  "Oenone,"  entirely  in  the  belief  that,  if 
played  at  all,  it  should  be  played  in  the  open.  And 
of  course  similar  dreams  have  come  to  dramatists  in 
all  ages,  all  languages.  Against  the  hampering  and 
confining  influences  of  the  inclosed  theater  there  has 
always  been  more  or  less  revolt.  Only  now  does  it 
seem  to  have  come  to  effective  expression. 

The  German  playwright,  however,  who  comes 
most  frequently  to  performances  at  such  theaters 
is  Franz  Grillparzer.  Until,  the  other  year,  Haupt- 
mann  founded  his  play  of  "Elga"  upon  an  old  play 
of  Grillparzer's,  modern  Anglo-Saxons  had  come  to 
forget  that  such  a  man  had  ever  existed.  But  the 
Germans  have  never  forgotten;  if  you  will  scan  the 
number  of  performances  that  plays  enjoy  annually 
in  German  lands,  you  will  always  find  the  works  of 
Grillparzer  well  to  the  fore.  He  satisfied  admirably 
the  German  desire  for  fine  rhetoric,  and  for  more  or 
less  fatal  tragedy.  The  German,  as  you  may  re- 
member, goes  us  always  one  better  in  the  direction  of 
dramatic  fatalities ;  he  not  only  knows  farce,  and 
comedy,  and  tragedy,  but  he  also  knows  (and  pre- 
fers) what  he  calls  the  "Trauerspiel,"  which  (you 


MODERNITY,  PAINT,  CARNIVAL     89 

cannot  properly  translate  it  unless  you  contrive  such 
abomination  as  mourning  play,  or  funeral  play) 
means  that  at  least  one  corpse  must  confront  the  final 
curtain. 

Then  the  hardened  German  playgoer,  having  had 
the  proper  amount  of  murder  and  sudden  death 
that  he  had  paid  to  see.  went  home  and  made  a  splen- 
did supper.  In  "Trauerspiel"  there  was  never  a 
more  prolific  and  successful  German  than  Grill- 
parzer.  On  the  repertoire  of  the  open-air  theater 
Luzern-Hertenstein  were  Ibsen;  also  Schiller's 
"Bride  of  Messina,"  Goethe's  "Torquato  Tasso" 
and  "Iphigenia  in  Tauris,"  Sophocles'  "Oedipus" 
and  Hoelderlin's  "Death  of  Empedocles";  but  you 
will  find  most  of  Grillparzer's,  namely,  "Sappho," 
"Medea"  and  "Hero  and  Leander." 

It  is  a  performance  at  Hertenstein  that  I  take  as 
typical,  and  try  to  sketch  here.  Three  times  a  week, 
weather  permitting,  plays  were  given.  The  play 
began  at  3  in  the  afternoon  and  ended  about  6. 
You  go  by  one  of  the  lake  steamers;  in  twenty  min- 
utes the  boat  touches  at  Hertenstein,  the  first  land- 
ing. In  fact,  from  any  of  the  hotels  near  the  Kur- 
saal  in  Lucerne  you  may  plainly  see  Hertenstein 
itself.  What  was  once  an  ancestral  castle,  Schloss 
Hertenstein,  is  now  modernized  into  a  hotel.  From 
the  landing  you  walk,  always  ascending,  to  the  hill- 
top, in  perhaps  fifteen  minutes.  You  find  yourself 
on  a  peninsula  between  the  main  body  of  the  Lake 
of  Four  Cantons  and  that  bend  which  makes  toward 
Kiissnacht,  where,  by  the  way,  Goethe  once  spent  a 
few  days. 

You  can  see  both  these  sheets  of  water,  Alp-in- 


9o  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

closed,  before  you.  Below  you,  against  the  slope  of 
the  hill,  benches  are  set,  the  semi-circular,  in  the 
classic  amphitheatric  form.  At  base  is  the  stage, 
simply  the  green  sward,  with  noble  giant  chestnut 
trees  at  back  and  in  the  foreground.  Leafage  and 
foliage  everywhere.  Just  where  the  hill  slopes 
sheerly  down  toward  the  water  is  set  a  temple  with 
six  pillars,  simply  Doric  in  style.  At  right  of  that  a 
sort  of  tower;  at  left  a  lower  tower;  again  at  the 
left  a  hut  in  slight  logs.  Except  the  hut,  everything 
is  in  white  stucco,  sufficiently  like  marble.  The  Doric 
temple  has  a  line  of  terra-cotta  color  just  over  the 
columns,  and  down  that  body  run  perpendicular  lines 
of  green  at  intervals;  otherwise  all  is  white  against 
the  green  of  the  natural  scene.  Through  this  green 
wooded  background  the  Alps  themselves  loomed 
hugely,  and  even  of  the  lake  itself  you  could  get 
shimmery  glimpses. 

The  occasion  when  everything  seemed  at  its  best 
in  this  new  and  immensely  interesting  form  of  art 
was  a  certain  performance  of  Grillparzer's  "Hero 
and  Leander."  Grillparzer,  it  should  be  remarked, 
went  out  of  his  way  to  entitle  his  play  romantically, 
thus:  "Des  Meeres  und  der  Liebe  Wellen,"  but  to 
translate  into  any  sort  of  English  would  but  mislead 
the  reader  away  from  the  fact  that  the  play  deals 
with  the  Hero  and  Leander  legend.  Grillparzer 
left  the  legend  pretty  much  as  it  was,  introducing 
merely  a  grim  high  priest  who,  having  thought  to 
discover  that  his  niece  (Hero)  lately  vowed  to  per- 
petual virginity  and  the  gods,  is  being  visited  nocturn- 
ally  by  Leander  (who  nightly  swims  the  Hellespont 
to  reach  her  in  her  isolated  tower),  waits  for  a  night 


MODERNITY,  PAINT,  CARNIVAL     91 

of  storm  and  then  extinguishes  the  light  which  burns 
on  Hero's  tower  to  guide  the  coming  lover.  Without 
the  light  the  swimmer  is  lost;  the  sea  brings  up  his 
body  at  the  tower's  base;  Hero,  when  she  sees  it, 
perishes  also;  the  curtain  falls  on  the  two  corpses. 

To  us  who  are,  after  all,  inexperienced  in  the  grim- 
mer sorts  of  tradegy  and,  outside  of  Shakespeare, 
but  seldom  listeners  to  blank  verse  on  the  stage,  it 
was  wonderful  how  keen  the  sense  of  drama  was 
throughout  the  piece.  Until  the  concluding  fatality, 
which  came  with  the  proper  Greek  note  of  the  in- 
evitable, there  were  plenty  of  light  spots  in  the  per- 
formance; humor  was  by  no  means  absent.  And, 
always,  there  stirred  almost  amazed  appreciation 
of  the  excellent  suitability  of  the  piece  to  this  open- 
air  method.  The  classic  robes,  mostly  white,  or 
simple  solid  colors — purples  and  blues — shining 
against  the  white  temple  and  the  green  of  nature; 
the  faint  music  sounding  now  and  then  from  below 
the  hill,  whence,  also,  the  actors  appeared  and  where 
they  disappeared — all  conspired  to  make  a  set  of 
memorable  pictures. 

These  pictures  were,  one  might  say,  set  in  equally 
memorable  music.  It  was,  as  I  recall,  a  somewhat 
gray  day  (yet  exceptional  in  that  tearful  Swiss  Sum- 
mer in  that  it  passed  without  rain),  but  the  green  of 
the  whole  nook  under  the  huge  chestnuts,  the  loom- 
ing majesty  of  the  Alps  and  the  moving  tragedy  on 
the  grass  before  us  all  gained  a  magic  musical  accom- 
paniment from  the  song  of  a  nightingale  that  sang 
incessantly  throughout  the  play.  Now  and  again  the 
bird  was  plainly  visible,  perched  upon  the  topmost 
swaying  branch.  It  carolled  there,  a  natural  artist, 


92  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

rejoicing  perhaps  that  some  of  the  ozone  and  light 
in  which  it  lived  had  now  begun  to  enter  the  life  of 
other  artists.  Certainly  nothing  could  well  have  been 
more  memorable  than  that  nightingale  singing  for 
the  Grillparzer  play  given  in  the  open  air  that  day 
in  Switzerland. 

It  was  notable  more  than  once  how  admirably  the 
very  lines  of  this  play  fitted  the  natural  scene  before 
the  spectator.  The  final  cry  of  agony  from  Hero 
rang  out  into  the  whole  landscape;  you  might  well 
say  that  the  Alps  themselves  furnished  the  acoustics 
for  this  theater.  From  my  description  you  will  have 
seen  how  few  incidentals  are  introduced  upon  Nature 
in  these  theaters.  A  temple  which  the  actors  them- 
selves used  instead  of  the  "wings"  of  the  routine 
theater;  a  tower  at  right  and  one  at  left;  a  statue  or 
two  to  fit  the  necessities  of  the  particular  play,  a 
hut;  otherwise  simply  the  scene  itself.  Unity  and 
the  elementary  emotions — those  were  the  essentials. 
No  change  of  scene  or  light.  The  old-time  repeti- 
tion of  the  three  knocks,  twice  warned  the  spectators ; 
in  the  next  moment  the  players  had  come  upon  that 
bit  of  Nature ;  the  play  was  on.  So  to  the  end,  when 
we  waked  from  the  grasp  of  Art  (in  Nature)  and 
gave  our  applause. 

IN  some  of  the  literature  upon  this  open-air  move- 
ment there  are  already  discussions  upon  the  acoustics, 
the  placing  of  the  voice,  on  light  and  such  other  ques- 
tions. There  are  already  magazines  published  solely 
in  the  interests  of  this  movement.  Some  argue  that 
certain  pieces  (among  them  the  Grillparzer  play 
just  described)  would  gain  by  being  played  later  in 


MODERNITY,  PAINT,  CARNIVAL     93 

the  day,  so  that  actual  twilight  would  fall  upon  the 
concluding  tragedy.  Such  points  should  show  you 
the  possibilities  still  undeveloped  in  this  dramatic 
form.  Gordon  Craig's  theories  of  light  upon  our 
artificial  theaters,  and  even  Max  Reinhardt's  cunning 
use  of  them,  seem  small  compared  with  such  a  large 
affair  as  the  best  way  of  employing  the  natural  light 
of  day  or  evening.  Similarly  there  is  a  certain  large- 
ness about  this  whole  enterprise  that  makes  one  fore- 
see for  it  a  healthy  and  influential  future.  It  is  a  re- 
volt against  the  too  mechanical  form  of  the  indoor 
theater;  it  is  a  voice  against  all  that  smacks  of  in- 
doors. Indoor  art  of  all  sorts  becomes  eventually 
an  art  of  emasculation  and  sterility. 

A  public  composed  of  snobs  (who  go  to  the  opera 
to  see  their  names  in  the  papers),  actors  who  are 
mere  automatons  and  playwrights  who  are  merely 
carpenters  are  the  result  of  indoor  art.  The  open- 
air  theater  is  calculated  to  appeal  to  the  real  lovers 
of  dramatic  art;  hardly  to  those  who  look  upon  the 
theater  merely  as  a  relief  from  business  cares  or 
from  ennui.  To  visit  the  open-air  theaters  it  is 
nearly  always  necessary  to  make  a  little  excursion 
into  the  country;  the  real  intention  and  desire  are 
paramount  in  the  spectator.  As  to  the  players,  it  is 
contended  that  there  will  be  for  them  much  relief 
in  the  absence  of  the  artificial  lights  and  of  the  con- 
fined sense  of  the  old-fashioned  theater.  Much,  un- 
doubtedly, still  remains  to  be  learned  about  the  best 
handling  of  the  voice  and  gesture  under  these  new 
circumstances.  But  you  may  be  sure  that  these  Ger- 
man artists,  earnestly  as  they  have  now  taken  up  this 
new  form  of  drama,  will  discover  easily  and  thor- 


94  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

oughly  the  finest  and  most  effective  details  that  it 
needs. 

Three  years  ago,  in  the  Weigelpark,  near  Schon- 
brunn,  outside  Vienna,  there  was  made  an  interest- 
ing experiment,  which  may  now  appositely  be 
recalled.  Max  Mell  of  Vienna  had  written  a  lit- 
tle pantomime.  Another  artist  had  designed  cos- 
tumes. The  players  were  mere  students,  but  there 
were  introduced  some  dances  by  the  Wiesenthal  sis- 
ters, who  were  later  to  become  famous  on  the  Euro- 
pean Continent.  Against  the  green  of  the  park, 
under  the  clear  Summer  sky,  those  delicate  colored 
costumes  and  those  charmingly  fantastic  dances  took 
on  an  effectiveness  that  would  never  have  been  reached 
within  walls.  Just  such  stuff  might  now  well  be  tried 
in  the  present  development  of  the  open-air  theater. 
Otto  Julius  Bierbaum  himself  wrote  just  such  panto- 
mimes; he,  too,  was  a  protagonist  of  the  open-air 
theater,  just  as  he  once  was  of  the  Ueberbrettl.  You 
will  easily  see  the  possibility,  too,  of  an  Isadora  Dun- 
can, a  Marie  Madeline,  a  Maud  Allan,  of  a  Russian 
or  Hungarian  troup  of  dancers,  against  the  wonder- 
ful green  magic  of  Nature. 

IV 

POETS,    PAINTERS    AND   DANCERS. 

ALL  the  arts  touch,  are  links  in  one  chain  of 
beauty.  The  picture  drawn,  just  now,  of  dancers  en- 
hancing their  beauty  and  their  skill  against  the  back- 
ground of  outdoors,  swings  me  to  the  poetry  and  the 
paint  that  dancers  have  called  forth.  By  virtue  of 


MODERNITY,  PAINT,  CARNIVAL     95 
T" 

which  they  may  live  when  neither  eyes  nor  legs  can 
fascinate  the  world. 

What,  to-day,  does  one  remember  of  Carmencita 
more  vivid  than  the  Sargent  picture  in  the  Luxem- 
bourg? In  Zuloaga's  "Spanish  Dancers"  the  entire 
type  gains  a  permanence  that  neither  the  jeweled 
sinuosities  of  an  Otero,  nor  the  nimble  loveliness  of 
a  Liane  d'Eve  can  win.  Nor  are  dancers  alone  in 
this.  Any  art  depending  on  the  gesture  or  the  voice 
— which  only  photograph  or  phonograph  can  liter- 
ally record — passes  more  quickly  than  the  others. 
The  actor,  the  singer  and  the  dancer  enjoy  the  brief- 
est fame.  They  live  longer  by  what  they  inspired 
in  poetry  and  paint  than  by  any  ever  so  vast  vogue 
they  may  have  enjoyed  while  alive. 

Each  visit  to  the  New  Pinakothek  starts  these  re- 
flections. Whether  Von  Lenbach's  Bismarck  was 
greater  than  his  Saharet,  I  wrote  some  pages  back, 
recurs  to  me  each  time  I  view  those  masterpieces. 
And  also,  before  his  Saharet,  I  recall  the  most  dismal 
Good  Friday  in  my  life. 

It  was  in  Hamburg.  I  was  marooned,  bankrupt. 
Through  that  grim  veil  of  penitence  nothing  of  en- 
tertainment could  possibly  pierce;  yet  certain  paint- 
ings succeeded  in  making  me  forget  the  clangor  of 
the  church  bells.  Not  the  bulbous  beauties  of  Hans 
Makart  in  the  famous  gallery;  those  were  old  stories. 
No — simply  the  publicly  exposed  portraits  of  Saharet 
the  dancer,  who  was  presently  to  visit  the  Alstertown. 
Apparently  every  other  portraitist  in  Germany  had 
painted  her.  Her  vogue  was  already  staled;  it  had 
already  lasted  a  decade ;  and  whether  she  was  Aus- 
tralian, American  or  only  German,  people  no  longer 


96  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

cared.  They  knew,  indeed,  that  she  was  amazingly 
domestic — a  grandmother,  indeed,  said  the  invidious 
— but,  Lord,  how  she  could  still  dance !  Above  all, 
what  memorable  pictures  had  been  painted  of  her  I 
In  one  who  could  inspire  to  such  art  so  many  eminent 
painters  there  must  indeed  have  been  vital  art  of  her 
own  and  vivid  beauty.  This  much  is  certain:  the 
portrait  by  Von  Lenbach  will  take  her  to  posterity 
when  music  hall  and  mirror  no  longer  record  her 
actual  graces. 

Will  we  remember  longest  La  Loie  Fuller,  or  the 
posters  Jules  Cheret  made  of  her?  Will  not  Dudley 
Hardy's  poster  for  "The  Gaiety  Girl"  live  fully  as 
long  as  the  piece  itself?  Impermanent  as  is  the  art  of 
the  uaffiche,"  it  still  has  more  chance  of  long  life 
than  the  actual  art  it  chronicles.  Toulouse-Lautrec 
gave  us  a  poster  of  Yvette  Guilbert  that  may  survive 
her,  and  Aubrey  Beardsley  framed  Rejane  in  one  of 
his  startling  arrangements  of  black  and  white.  Long 
before  the  "Merry  Widow"  waltzed  her  way  across 
the  worlds,  Lehar's  fellow-countryman,  the  Freiherr 
von  Recnicek,  had  given  us  a  sketch  of  the  Viennese 
waltz  which  you  need  only  compare  with  the  operetta 
to  find  the  resemblance.  Juan  Cardona  had  given  us 
a  charming  picture  of  a  Spanish  dancer,  and  given  us 
this  thought  of  hers:  "I'd  like  to  tour  as  a  Spanish 
dancer  well  enough,  but — firstly,  I'm  too  young; 
secondly,  I'm  Spanish;  and,  lastly,  I  can  really 
dance!"  Which,  blithe  opposite  to  the  aforenamed 
canvas  by  Zuloaga,  helps  to  keep  vivid  the  type  when 
its  impersonators  are  no  more. 

Let  us  applaud  Isadora  Duncan  as  much  as  we  like ; 
let  us  give  solemn  ear  to  all  the  noble  lessons  she 


MODERNITY,  PAINT,  CARNIVAL     97 

would  teach  with  her  toes ;  but  let  us  not  imagine  that 
she,  her  pupils  or  her  theories  will  live  as  long  as  the 
portrait  F.  A.  von  Kaulbach  painted  of  her  in  Munich 
in  1902. 

Even  Adeline  Genee  has  been  caught  for  the  fu- 
ture; there  are  two  chapters  on  her  in  a  book  of  A. 
B.  Walkley's;  imperishable  as  her  art  seems  now, 
she  is  the  safer  that  she  lives  in  literature.  I  have 
seen  no  great  portrait  of  her.  As  for  the  daughter 
of  Herodias,  not  only  literature,  through  Wilde,  but 
music,  through  Richard  Strauss  and  others,  have 
made  her  dancing  immortal. 

And  poetry  .  .  .  Do  you  recall,  I  wonder,  the 
case  of  Mile.  Madeleine?  Munich,  once  again, 
gives  me  this  memory. 

Madeleine's  specialty  was  dancing  while  in  a 
trance. 

At  any  rate,  as  in  the  story  of  Pharoah's  daughter, 
"that's  what  she  said."  Whether  the  scientists  made 
use  of  her  performances  to  add  to  the  hypnotic  lore 
at  disposal  of  Dr.  Charcot  and  his  fellows,  or 
whether  for  her  story  there  was  no  more  basis  in 
fact  than  there  may  have  been  for  Du  Maurier's 
"Trilby,"  is  no  great  matter;  the  fact  remains  that 
she  aroused,  by  her  "hypnotic  dancing,"  a  veritable 
Madeleine  epidemic  throughout  Germany.  The 
case  is  one  more  proof  of  the  danger  of  thinking 
there  is  no  philosophy  in  a  paradox;  here,  once  again, 
was  Wilde's  assertion  that  Nature  copies  Art  made 
manifest,  since  the  story  of  "Trilby"  considerably 
antedated  the  appearance  of  this  dancer. 

The  one,  you  will  recall,  could  sing  only  while  un- 
der the  influence  of  Svengali ;  this  dancer  could  dance 


9 8  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

only  while  in  a  hypnotic  trance.  She,  too,  like  Dun- 
can, danced  stories,  philosophies,  poems  and  history. 
Like  the  music  of  Richard  Strauss,  which  a  little  later 
was  to  pretend  to  express  philosophies  and  tragedies 
in  tone,  so  these  dances  exhibited  all  the  other  arts. 
Learned  persons  were  invited  upon  the  platform  to 
pinch  Mile.  Madeleine's  calves  and  convince  them- 
selves of  her  unconscious  state  in  every  possible  way; 
whether  they  went  away  believing  or  doubting,  the 
public  was  sure  of  this  at  least,  that  this  young  per- 
son was  extremely  good  to  look  upon,  and  that  she 
danced  divinely. 

The  public,  I  repeat,  and  even  the  poets,  used  that 
phrase;  if  we  are  more  logically  inclined,  we  would 
avoid  it,  since  none  of  us  ever  saw  an  actual  divinity 
dance.  But  let  us  return  to  the  poets.  They  sang 
of  her  for  at  least  one  Summer — and  that,  for  poets, 
is  long  faithfulness.  Let  me,  in  merest  hints,  recall 
to  you  what  one  Munich  poet,  A.  De  Nora,  expended 
on  this  subject,  while  he  used  for  his  title  without 
other  addition,  "Madeleine."  The  bravest,  most 
prosaic  hint  of  what  was  in  his  song  will  expose  the 
fervor  of  his  singing;  and  he  was  typical  of  all  the 
rest. 

"Is  she  in  dreams?"  he  asked,  "Or  is  the  dream 
in  her?  Are  all  these  dreams  simply  her  body's 
music?  Her  body  but  her  dreams  turned  music? 
.  .  .  I  do  not  know.  I  only  see  before  me  in  the 
garishly  reflected  light  this  living,  lovely,  voiceless 
riddle  weaving — swaying — stooping — rising — and 
every  tone's  hardly  completed  trance  trembling  upon 
her  pallid  face,  like  faintest  spoor  on  virgin  snow. 
Now  like  the  weasel's  stealthy  steps;  now  with  the 


MODERNITY,  PAINT,  CARNIVAL     99 

majesty  of  deer  that  go  to  pools — now  dimly  like  the 
shadows  thrown  by  pigeon  wings,  now  awful,  like 
the  rising  of  the  mighty  wings  of  Death.  ...  So, 
drawn  by  music's  lure,  the  closely  serried  crowd  of 
passions  pass  from  out  her  secret  soul,  over  her 
bod's  marble  steps,  to  the  temple  of  her  face. 
And  that,  indeed,  is  beautiful !  As  false,  perhaps,  as 
she  is  fair?  Perhaps  only  for  cunning's  sake,  to  hide 
her  conscious  careful  art,  she  wears  this  azure  cloak 
of  dreams?  What  matter,  and  who  cares?  Is  not 
the  soul  of  every  woman  like  a  Sphinx,  that  sits  and 
smiles  upon  the  verge  of  the  intangible,  and  gives  us 
riddles  none  can  solve?" 

You  will  see  from  this  slight  paraphrase  of  mine 
to  what  enthusiasm  the  younger  German  poets  rose 
in  such  case.  Whether  or  not  this  dancer  was  a  great 
artist  or  not  is  not  my  point;  it  is  the  stimulus  such 
dancing  as  this  gave  to  the  other  arts  that  I  am  in- 
sisting on. 

Poetry,  paint,  the  theater  and  the  dance  have  been 
shown  inextricably  interwoven,  but  Munich  has  long 
had  more  than  that  to  show.  Impossible  to  discuss 
Munich  and  dancing  without  touching  on  Lola  Mon- 
tez.  She  danced  not  only  drama  and  philosophy  for 
us,  but  history.  She  takes  us  back,  not  six  or  ten 
years,  but  sixty.  We  think  these  young  women,  who 
dance  history  and  philosophy  and  poetry  for  us,  are 
doing  something  new.  By  no  means;  in  1847  there 
appeared  in  Leipsic  a  caricature  of  Lola  Montez 
with  this  caption:  "Lola  Montez  Dances  Bavarian 
History."  You  see  how  we  repeat  the  fads  and 
vogues  not  only  of  other  years  and  other  centuries ! 
I  dare  say  the  Greeks  and  Romans  had  their  dancers, 


ioo  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

too,  whose  press  agents  pretended  their  like  had 
never  been  before.  Lola  Montez  danced  her  way 
to  royal  favor  with  her  El  Ole,  and  from  that  time 
those  active  feet  of  hers  did  literally  lead  Bavarian 
history  a  dance.  And  there,  precisely — through  the 
history  written  about  her  and  the  cartoons  devoted 
to  her — she  secured  for  herself  a  renown  that  greater 
dancers  have  missed. 

Poetry,  the  theater,  the  dance,  history  and — we 
are  back  to  paint  again.  A  very  debauch  of  the  arts, 
always,  for  even  the  most  barbaric,  outdoor  person  in 
Munich.  All  the  senses,  eventually  to  say  nothing  of 
one's  shoes,  wear  to  shreds  in  such  debauch.  The 
floors  and  walls  of  galleries,  innumerable  miles  of 
them,  leave  us  mere  remnants  for  the  ministering 
mercies  of  cobbler  and  oculist.  Let  us  tell  the  motor- 
man  to  steer  us  away — any  whither,  anywhere  there 
are  no  pictures,  no  statues — anywhere,  in  short, 
where  we  can  undergo  a  Kur.  The  Germans  take  a 
Kur  for  everything  else ;  let  us  take  one  for  art. 


CHAPTER    FIVE 

A   TYPICAL    CURE    RESORT 

HAPPILY  enough,  perhaps,  the  average 
American  does  not  yet  know  the  Euro- 
pean "cure."  Yet,  if  the  national  dis- 
eases of  nerves,  dyspepsia  and  whatever 
others  there  may  be,  spread  presently  from  the  well- 
to-do  to  the  plain  citizen,  it  will  not  be  long  before 
what  is  now  as  much  an  excuse  for  travel  as  a  real 
search  for  health  becomes  a  truly  national  necessity. 
To-day  the  American  trend  toward  the  fashionable 
European  Kur-Ort  is  still  in  the  amateur  stage,  de- 
spite the  mere  numbers  of  those  who  go.  The 
Americans,  that  is,  have  not  yet  reached — one  need 
not  hope  that  they  ever  reach ! — the  matter-of-course 
attitude  with  which  the  good  average  German  citizen 
runs  all  the  winter  long  straight  in  the  face  of  all 
sensible  rules  of  diet  and  health,  saying  all  the  while : 
"After  all,  it  is  for  this  one  makes  one's  little  cure  in 
the  summer."  He  knows  the  penalty,  and  he  cheer- 
fully looks  toward  it.  It  is  a  question  whether  he 
enjoys  more  the  winter  in  which  he  outrages  nature, 
or  the  summer  in  which  he  allows  nature  to  bring  him 
back  to  health.  For,  of  course,  the  "cure"  is  little 
but  a  return  to  nature's  laws. 

You  are  not  to  suppose,  moreover,  that  the  shrewd 
German,  Swiss,  Italian  and  French  innkeepers,  doc- 
tors and  other  professional  aids  to  human  comfort 

101 


102  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

and  health  neglect  the  winter  time.  By  no  means. 
If  in  summer  the  health-seekers  throng  Marienbad, 
Carlsbad,  Kissingen,  Nauheim,  Schwalbach,  Wies- 
baden, Baden  Baden,  Pyrmont,  Spa,  Aix,  Salsomag- 
giore,  Bagni  di  Lucca  or  any  of  the  other  constantly 
discoverable  resorts  of  middle  Europe,  in  winter  an- 
other throng  fills  Davos,  St.  Moritz,  Adelboden, 
Meran  and  the  almost  countless  winter  resorts  of  the 
Swiss,  the  Italian,  the  French  or  the  Bavarian  moun- 
tains. Some  cure  nerves,  some  cure  care;  all  are  cur- 
ing in  one  way  or  another  ills  brought  on  by  living 
too  far  from  nature.  Summer  and  winter  the  cures 
flourish.  All  winter  long  inns  keep  open  that  once 
had  to  harvest  in  a  few  short  summer  months. 

If  Americans  have  not  yet  reached  the  for-granted 
attitude  of  the  Germans  toward  the  "cure,"  it  is  be- 
cause, as  has  been  said,  they  are  still  comparatively 
beginners.  It  is  only  of  recent  years  that  the  national 
nerves  have  begun  to  collapse. 

IN  trying  to  give  you  a  picture  from  the  outside 
of  life  at  a  characteristic  European  Kur-Ort,  I  am 
not  declaring  ignorance  of  the  existence  of  plenty  of 
such  curative  resorts  on  our  own  side  of  the  water. 
That  is  not  the  point  at  the  moment;  nor  is  it  the 
moment's  question  whether  actual  lack  of  health  or 
simply  a  desire  to  seem  fashionable  drives  most 
Americans  to  the  cures  abroad.  Let  us  leave  causes, 
and  be  content  with  facts.  There  they  are,  those 
cure  places,  on  the  other  side,  and  there,  each  sum- 
mer and  each  winter,  you  will  find  more  and  more 
Americans.  The  life  in  such  a  place,  viewed  humor- 
ously and  intimately,  is  full  of  color  and  charm  and 


A   TYPICAL    CURE    RESORT        103 

such  irony  as  those  who  are  consciously  "making  the 
cure"  cannot  possibly  see.  To  appreciate  those  iron- 
ies properly,  you  must  be  a  casual  observer,  not  a 
victim  seeking  the  cure  itself. 

It  happens  that  a  childhood  of  being  dragged  from 
one  of  the  older  European  cure-resorts  to  an- 
other familiarized  the  writer  with  the  characteristics 
of  the  most  typical  in  that  sort.  The  names  do  not 
matter  much;  in  one  generation  this  is  fashionable, 
in  another  that.  We  know,  for  instance,  that  it  was 
in  Ems,  then  fashionable,  that  the  word  was  given 
by  the  then  king  of  Prussia  which  resulted  in  the 
building  of  the  present  German  empire.  The  second 
German  emperor  was  also  fond  of  Ems;  but  to-day 
it  has  returned  sheerly  to  its  curative  virtues;  only 
Germans  and  Russians  and  French  are  seen  there; 
it  has  no  fashionable  or  royal  attractions  for  the 
Americans,  who  are  beginning  to  play  with  Kur-Orts 
as  with  a  new  toy.  I  was  there  last  year  for  the  first 
time  since  childhood,  and  I  heard  not  one  American 
voice.  The  humor  of  which  is — had  I  not  said  this 
subject  was  full  of  trapdoors? — that  Ems  is  exactly 
a  cure  for  the  American  voice.  But — it  is  not  my  in- 
tention to  name  names;  I  am  merely  emphasizing 
how  fashions  change  in  cures,  as  in  all  else.  Once, 
too,  Teplitz,  in  Bohemia,  was  as  frequented  as  any 
of  the  other  places  where  warm  waters  gush  forth 
for  humanity's  benefit;  to-day  you  will  wait  long  be- 
fore you  see  a  Teplitz  label  on  an  American  trunk. 

A  typical  place  does  not  need  to  be  identified  for 
my  present  purpose.  It  is  a  German  one,  of  course; 
for,  after  all,  though  we  know  that  Italy  and  France 
and  Belgium  are  full  of  rival  resorts,  it  is  in  the  Ger- 


104  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

man  countries  that  the  "cure"  as  a  real  part  and  par- 
cel of  civilized  life  has  been  brought  to  its  greatest 
perfection.  It  is  the  Germans  who  lift  eyebrows 
when  a  family  declares  that  it  is  not  going  to  a  cure 
that  summer;  it  is  the  Germans  who  have  system- 
atized the  Kur-Ort  until  it  is  a  distinct  realm  of  its 
own. 

Whether  it  is  a  resort  for  the  cure  of  nerves,  of 
fat,  or  liver,  of  gout,  or  of  what  not,  the  essential 
procedure  differs  but  slightly.  In  some  places  there 
is  an  actual  air  of  strict  adherence  to  a  medical  rou- 
tine ;  in  others  a  frank  admission  that  it  is  entertain- 
ment the  visiting  population  is  after.  Let  us  sketch 
a  medium  specimen. 

In  such  a  Kur-Ort  the  life  is  characteristic  both  of 
cures  and  of  cosmopolis.  That  is,  indeed,  the  note 
of  the  more  frequented  of  these  places.  There  lies, 
perhaps,  much  of  the  charm  that  brings  the  visitors 
from  the  ends  of  the  earth.  If  the  underlying  tone 
of  all  is  German,  the  note  of  Russian,  of  Dutch,  and 
American  speech  is  often  as  prominent.  You  can 
spend  long  days  playing  with  the  problems  of  exter- 
nals and  the  nationalities  they  cover.  A  student  of 
facial  types  need  never  tire  of  employment  for  his 
wits  in  such  a  place.  Nor  the  student  of  manners 
and  customs.  Here  is  cosmopolis  in  little. 

They  tell  us  about  this  or  that  great  corner  on  this 
or  that  great  metropolitan  thoroughfare  of  human 
traffic.  That  if  you  will  watch  long  enough,  you  will 
see  all  that's  worth  while  in  the  world  from  such  a 
corner.  Well,  you  can  say  much  the  same  of  the 
characteristic  Kur-Ort.  The  one  I  have  in  mind,  for 
instance,  combines  curative  properties  with  an  actual 


A   TYPICAL    CURE    RESORT        105 

entertaining  life  of  its  own  as  a  town,  as  a  center  of 
entertainment  and  civic  activity.  The  observer  is 
not  forced  to  witness  merely  a  somewhat  saddening 
procession  of  invalids.  The  actual  invalids  are  so 
mingled  into  the  seekers  after  rest  or  entertainment 
or  fashionable  fellowship  that  the  total  picture  still 
has  color  and  humor.  It  is  true  there  are  plenty  of 
the  lame,  the  halt  and  the  blind,  plenty  of  processions 
of  the  spectacled  and  the  crutched.  In  one  region 
might  be  found  the  greatest  eye  specialist  in  Europe, 
or  at  any  rate  his  nephew;  the  English  visitors  who 
believed  in  his  fame  did  not  stop  to  inquire  into  those 
particulars.  In  another  district  was  the  greatest  man 
on  nerves,  and  so  on  down  the  whole  list  of  ailments. 
But  you  did  not  have  to  see  those  features  to  the  ex- 
clusion of  the  more  humorous  details. 

For  it  was  surely  humorous  to  note  early  in  the 
morning  at  an  hour  when  in  England,  in  Russia,  in 
Holland  and  in  America  they  would  not  have  risen 
for  hours  the  fashionable  and  the  feeble  taking  their 
little  glasses  and  their  tubes  and  going  to  the  springs 
to  gurgle  warm  water  slowly  and  walk  slowly  about 
and  listen  to  the  band.  Solemnly,  as  doing  a  great 
duty  not  only  to  themselves,  but  all  humanity,  they 
trod  their  gentle  measures  with  a  sort  of  military, 
not  to  say  medical,  precision.  Or  do  we  wrong  them 
by  imputing  to  them  a  concern  for  the  human  mass? 
Perhaps;  on  second  thought,  there  is  none  so  egotisti- 
cally selfish  as  the  true  cure-guest.  Were  you  to  dis- 
turb, for  instance,  by  a  look,  a  word,  a  touch,  the 
even  stateliness  of  his  tread  while  sipping  water  from 
his  glass,  there  is  no  telling  what  annihilation  he 
might  not  hurl  at  you.  The  band  plays  its  specified 


io6  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

hour;  the  cure-folk  sip  and  stroll;  the  ladies'  cos- 
tumes are  not  yet  elaborated  for  fashionable  com- 
parisons, since — let  us  whisper  it — some  of  them  are 
about  to  go  to  bed  again.  Why  not?  In  the  proper 
cure  resort  they  always  bring  the  coffee  and  the  rolls 
to  a  properly  paying  guest's  room.  Comes,  then,  an 
hour  or  so  when  cosmopolis  is  not  visible.  It  is 
sleeping,  breakfasting,  bathing  in  the  curative  waters, 
seeing  its  doctor. 

If  you  will  do  no  more  than  sit  on  one  of  the 
benches  in  the  public  gardens,  or  in  the  rooms  of  the 
Kur-Haus,  or  before  the  portico  of  such  an  inn  as 
the  Four  Seasons,  in  Wiesbaden,  one  of  the  most  de- 
lightful in  Europe,  you  will  see  and  hear  the  world 
awaking  for  its  public  appearance.  Cabs  come  and 
go.  If  it  is  the  high  season  for  fashion — every 
resort  has  its  high  pinnacle  of  fashionableness,  and 
some  of  the  larger  places  have  two  high  seasons  in 
the  year — you  will  see  so  many  royalties  and  hear  so 
much  elaborate  courtesy  that  you  will  never  again  be 
much  stirred  by  the  magnificence  of  our  most  con- 
spicuous plutocrats.  In  the  cure  itself,  however,  all 
men,  even  Americans,  are  equal.  Princes  of  the 
blood  or  princelings  of  the  sinister,  plutocrats  of 
Holland  or  New  Amsterdam,  good  burgesses  from 
Rixdorf  or  from  Salem,  heavy  guardsmen  from  Pic- 
cadilly or  from  Potsdam — all  are  equal  before  the 
cure  regime.  You  take  a  glass  of  water  at  seven, 
and  you  walk  so  many  miles ;  you  take  a  warm  bath  at 
ninety-something  (more  likely  at  twenty-something 
Reaumur)  ;  you  eat  just  this  or  that;  in  the  afternoon 
you  drink  more  water  and  listen  to  more  music;  you 


A   TYPICAL    CURE    RESORT        107 

do  all  this  exactly  and  faithfully,  or  you  are  a  mere 
fashionable  flaneur  and  have  not  come  for  the  cure. 
To  sit  aside,  to  drink  the  water  simply  because  it 
seems  harmless,  to  take  one  of  those  baths  now  and 
again  because  they  cleanse  and  to  enjoy  the  constant 
music  is  pleasant,  but  it  can  also  be  dangerous,  as  I 
must  point  out  later.  For  the  present  let  us  enjoy 
the  pleasant  spectacle  from  the  outside.  At  noon 
there  is  the  first  procession  for  the  benefit  of  all  with 
eyes  to  see.  The  nationalities  mingle,  their  clothes 
and  their  speech  parade  under  the  accurately  trimmed 
chestnut  trees;  fountains  play  in  the  sunshine,  and 
Russian  music  swings  in  from  the  park.  You  need 
not,  in  that  fashionable  mob,  discern  disease;  there 
are  wheeled  chairs  here  and  there,  or  other  such 
evidences,  but  the  gaiety  of  the  scene  is  dominant. 
The  scene  repeats  itself  again  at  the  hour  of  coffee, 
between  four  and  five;  the  music  plays  again  in  the 
gardens  of  the  Kur-Haus,  and  again  the  world  and 
his  wife  strolls  up  and  down  over  the  gravel.  At 
night,  in  fine  weather,  again  the  music,  outdoors,  and 
sometimes  wonderfully  effective  fireworks  over  foun- 
tains and  trees.  You  have  to  admit  that  these  Ger- 
mans do  their  cure-business  well.  They  do  not,  in  the 
main,  give  you  gambling,  as  some  other  nations  do, 
but  they  give  you  good  music,  good  plays  and  well- 
staged  opera.  In  the  resort  I  have  in  mind,  for  in- 
stance, you  had  all  the  entertainment  an  American 
metropolis  could  give  you.  The  picture  was  more 
intimate,  all  was  closer  together,  you  could  study 
your  neighbors  more  effectively;  that  was  the  chief 
difference. 


io8  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

AMERICANS,  in  such  a  place  as  Wiesbaden,  it  is 
to  be  remarked,  do  not  loom  large.  They  have  not 
yet  discovered  the  solidity  of  its  fashionableness,  if 
we  may  call  it  so.  Emperors  go  there,  and  with  les- 
ser dignitaries  the  halls  and  streets  simply  swarm; 
but  no  especial  appeal  is  made  for  the  American  cus- 
tom. Yet  it  is,  for  all  that,  more  characteristic  of 
the  real  Kur-Ort  than  many  of  the  places  where 
Americans  go  largely  in  order  to  impress  other 
Americans.  Our  country  people,  discovered  under 
these  conditions  as  only  a  slight  feature  of  the  total, 
loom  but  faintly  against  the  Russians  and  the  Dutch. 

The  faring  forth  abroad  of  the  well-to-do  Dutch 
is  comparatively  a  new  thing.  Not  so  with  the  Rus- 
sians. I  recall  boyhood  days  in  Schwalbach,  where 
even  then  the  Russians  were  in  evidence ;  they,  with  the 
English,  had  then  the  greatest  habit  of  travel.  We  all 
know  that  the  Russian  is  greatly  in  evidence  in  Paris 
and  the  lesser  pleasure  places;  but  there  are  few 
places  anywhere  in  Europe  where  he  is  not  seeking 
either  distraction  or  health.  He  or  she;  whether  it 
is  the  incalculable  melancholy  of  the  Russian  country 
that  drives  its  men  and  its  women  away  so  much,  we 
cannot  say  here,  but  it  is  a  fact  that  you  will  never 
realize  anything  of  the  Russian  type,  whether  in 
brutality  or  beauty,  until  you  have  lived,  rather  than 
sampled,  the  life  of  this  or  that  European  cure  resort. 
In  many  places  the  Russians  loom  so  large  that 
concerts  of  strictly  Russian  music  are  given  no  less 
than  once  a  week  throughout  the  season. 

You  grow,  eventually,  callous  to  all  the  magnifi- 
cences and  personages.  A  genial  old  Russian  bear 
and  I  used  to  engage  several  times  a  day  upon  a  per- 


A   TYPICAL   CURE   RESORT       109 

formance  in  front  of  the  most  staid  inn  the  town 
afforded;  that  will  show  you  how  irreverently  one 
becomes  inured  to  human  greatness.  The  moment 
the  one  of  us  caught  sight  of  the  other,  at  twenty, 
thirty,  forty  paces — no  matter  how  far  off — each 
stopped,  clicked  heels  together,  lifted  hat  from  head 
in  most  elaborate  swing,  bowed  slowly  forward  and, 
approaching,  cried  as  with  one  accord,  uGood  morn- 
ing, Excellenz  1"  I  am  sure  there  was  not  a  soul  that 
watched  who  was  not  convinced  that  we  were  not, 
indeed,  as  great  Excellencies  as  any  of  them.  Why, 
when  titles  and  dignities  fly  about  as  freely  as  in 
America  such  titles  as  captain,  or  colonel,  or  major, 
or  simply  the  good  old  "Say"  I  should  one  not  take 
one  and  play  with  it  a  little  ?  My  friend,  the  Russian, 
began  it;  he  said  it  was  useless  for  me  to  deny  it:  I 
looked  like  an  Excellenz,  and  that  settled  it.  From 
that  day  we  played  our  comedy  with  due  solemnity. 
If  he  told  me,  that  fine  old  Russian,  much  of  Peters- 
burg and  Moscow,  he  also  proved  to  me  that  the 
Russians  have  humor  as  well  as  melancholy. 

OF  humor,  and  of  melancholy,  is  such  a  Kur-Ort 
full.  I  have  hinted,  in  these  last  pages,  of  an  under- 
lying danger  in  noting,  from  a  safe  aloofness,  the 
cures  of  others.  For,  once  upon  a  time  I  employed 
a  summer  in  such  observation,  in  a  resort  where  peo- 
ple left  so  much  gout  and  rheumatism  that  I,  until 
then  immune  from  either  ailment,  felt  for  the  first 
time  in  my  life  a  heritage  of  uric  acid.  One  man's 
meat,  and  so  on.  What  cured  the  others  undid  me. 
There  was  humor,  there  was  melancholy,  indeed! 

But  the  humor  must  prevail.    What  we  must  feel 


no  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

is  that,  having  "made  our  cure,"  we  have  done  our 
duty.  Having  drunk  too  deep  of  life,  or  of  art,  hav- 
ing had  the  world,  in  flesh  and  blood  or  in  paint  and 
mask,  too  much  with  us,  we  have  now  purged  body 
and  soul  in  the  cure.  We  are  washed  sweet  again. 
We  can  face  again  the  world,  the  flesh  and  the  devil. 
And  what  does  that  spell,  if  not  Paris? 


CHAPTER    SIX 

THE    COURTESAN    OF    CITIES:    PARIS 

I 
HER    FIRST    INVITATION 

AT  last,   then,   in  the   dear  city  of  delight, 
Paris.     Paris — with  its  thousand  and  one 
fair  memories,   its   throng  of  paint   and 
marble  ghosts,  its  vistas  of  historic  riot, 
of  yesterdays  that  ran  with  blood,  and  to-morrows 
pale  with  absinthe !     Paris,  with  its  myriad  enchant- 
ments of  art  and  femininity;  Paris,  the  queen  of 
courtesans  among  cities! 

Some  such  vague  ecstasy  comes  over  all  of  us  who 
visit  or  revisit  this  dream-city  of  one's  artistic  spirit. 
Whether  one  come  to  it  after  long  absence,  or  for  the 
first  time,  the  effect  is  much  the  same.  The  more  if 
the  interval  of  youth  has  seen  one  steeped  in  at- 
tempts to  fathom  the  uslim  gilt  soul"  of  Paris  as  that 
soul  breathes  through  the  arts.  If  one  has  sung  the 
chansons  of  Verlaine  to  fit  one's  mournful,  youthful 
moods;  has  laughed  with  Forain  and  Caran  d'Ache; 
has  seen  the  boulevards  and  brasseries  through  the 
eyes  and  the  pencils  of  Steinlen  and  Willette;  has 
watched  the  disheveled  riot  of  the  music-halls  by  way 
of  Jules  Cheret  and  Toulouse-Lautrec;  has  searched 
for  the  heart  of  things  French  through  the  grim 

ill 


ii2  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

bronze  of  Rodin,  the  spiced  prose  of  Prevost,  the 
irony  of  Octave  Mirbeau,  and  the  jasmined  poison 
of  Catulle  Mendes — is  it  any  wonder  that  the  actual 
sight  and  feel  of  Paris  start  a  thrill  that  has  all  the 
ecstasy  of  dream?  Every  artistic  and  romantic 
fiber  responds  to  the  mere  thought  that  it  is,  once 
more,  the  Parisian  air  one  breathes,  the  Parisian 
streets  one  walks,  and  the  Parisian  women  one  moves 
among. 

IF  one  is  given  to  the  ecstatic,  in  so  champagne- 
like  an  atmosphere  as  that  of  Paris,  it  is  as  well  to 
prepare  for  trouble.  Should  opportunity  and  coin- 
cidence contrive  together  to  foment  more  ecstasies, 
there  is  no  knowing  what  might  not  happen. 

We,  at  any  rate,  Tom  Vingtoin  and  I,  were,  in  the 
beginning  of  the  episode  that  recurs  to  me  whenever 
I  think  of  Paris,  quite  innocent  of  impending  dis- 
aster. We  were  sitting  quite  peaceably  at  a  little 
table  outside  the  Cafe  de  la  Paix,  opposite  the  Opera. 
No  need,  surely,  to  introduce  to  you  Vingtoin; 
among  the  men  in  the  younger  movements  of  art, 
especially  as  concerns  interpretation  of  Gallic  art 
for  English  reading,  no  man  should  be  better  known. 
1  found  him  as  delightful  as  ever.  He  was  grown  a 
trifle  stout,  but  his  lovely  Scots-Parisian  accent  was 
as  fascinating  as  of  yore,  and  his  monocle  was  un- 
dimmed.  You  may  imagine,  when  one  has  spilt  Eng- 
lish ink  together  side  by  side,  and  has  even  concocted 
independent  theaters  for  the  reformation  of  New 
York,  that  one  may  have,  meeting  thus  after  many 
years,  much  to  say  to  each  other. 

Besides,  Vingtoin  has  an  exquisite  taste  in  Pernot 


THE    COURTESAN    OF    CITIES     113 

blanche.  The  waiter  piled  the  little  platters  on  the 
table ;  they  began  to  assume  quite  a  disreputable 
height,  telling  the  tale  of  our  thirst  and  our  conversa- 
tional ardor. 

The  staccato  notes  of  Paris  and  the  boulevard  fell 
upon  us,  the  insanely  futile  cracking  of  the  cabmen's 
whips,  the  grinding  and  squeaking  of  the  'bus  brakes, 
like  souls  in  pain,  the  reek  and  thump  of  the  motor- 
cars, the  shouts  of  the  newspaper  sellers,  the  twang 
of  the  many  Americans,  the  chatter  of  milliners' 
girls.  We  talked  on  and  on,  and  our  interest  in  the 
past  and  the  present  and  the  future  grew  as  the  Per- 
not  blanche  dipped  toward  us. 

"My  dear  boy,"  said  Vingtoin,  "we  shall  have 
great  times!  We  shall  sit  where  Verlaine  sat,  and  I 
will  point  out  to  you  where  he  hung  his  pipe.  Ah, 
the  poor  old  man !  You  shall  take  a  look  in  the  cafe 
where  the  Reading  gaolbird  dropped  his  bloated 
paunch  and  ogled  the  throng.  We  will  go  to  Rodin's 
studio  together; — we  will — " 

"But  first  you  will  come  to  dinner  with  me?" 

"Ah,  no!  I'm  terribly  sorry,  but,  in  the  first 
place,  I  have  three  thousand  words  to  write  to-night, 
and  in  the  next,  my  wife  is  expecting  me  in  Belle vue; 
you  see  we  live  half  an  hour  out.  Another  day  I 
shall  be  delighted."  And  he  launched  forth  again 
into  plans  for  the  immediate.  We  were  to  wheel 
together  into  the  suburbs  and  the  countryside;  Ver- 
sailles, St.  Cloud  and  many  another  place  was  to  find 
us  awheel  together.  But  he  could  not  dine  with  me. 
Well,  it  was  a  great  pity,  but — who  was  I  to  coax  him 
from  work  and  duty.  Far  be  it  .  .  . 

The  motor-cars  went  by  with  their  teuf,  teuf — 


ii4  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

most  abominable  of  noises.  An  ancient  went  by 
twanging  his  newspaper  shout,  "La  Presse"  "Le 
Frangais,"  and  the  infinite  drawl  of  that  "presse"  I 
cannot  make  plain  to  you  unless  you  have  heard  it 
yourself.  Another  ancient  followed,  very  staccato, 
with  "Paris,  Sport — Complet,"  to  get  the  full  effect 
of  which  you  must  attempt  something  like  this, 
"Paree — spore — complay!"  Inwardly  I  shriek  with 
laughter  at  the  Parisian  version  of  our  good  word 
"sport,"  but  Vingtoin  is  now  too  Parisian  to  note  the 
grotesquerie.  He  is  asking  me  about  all  the  other 
musketeers  of  the  time  when  we  went  smashing  wind- 
mills together  in  America. 

"Charley  is  at  the  old  grind.  He  is  always 
threatening  to  come  here.  But  I  believe  he  will  never 
come.  Nelson  translates,  and  writes  plays,  and 
translates.  Gaffers  still  shouts  for  purity  in  the 
theater.  They  are  all  prosperous.  So  are  you.  All 
but  I." 

"You,  you  scamp !  I  believe  you  are  a  millionaire 
in  disguise.  We  others  grind  for  the  magazines  and 
syndicates;  you  manage  to  write  books.  You  are 
heard  of  in  strange  places  masquerading  in  blue  gog- 
gles and  a  linen  duster,  you — bah !  you  are  something 
mysterious,  I  believe,  a  ward  in  Chancery  or  the 
like!" 

"I  am  content  with  health,  if  that's  what  you  mean, 
while  you  others  fight  for  fame.  I  am  pot>r,  but  in 
Paris;  will  you  dine  with  me?" 

"My  dear  boy,  I  can't;  I  really  can't!" 

"Too  bad !  Well — Ah,  by  the  way,  we  forgot  one 
man  of  the  old  crew.  How's  Dutot?  Here,  I 
know,  and  flourishing,  but  do  you  see  much  of  him?" 


THE    COURTESAN   OF   CITIES     115 

Dutot  was  the  one  who  had  been  a  sort  of  ring- 
leader of  our  young  nihilism  in  New  York  art  and 
letters.  He  was  a  Frenchman,  and  was  now  once 
more  on  his  native  soil,  prosperous  and  inventive  as 
ever.  He  has  the  theater  upon  the  brain,  and  makes 
his  salt  by  inventions  for  the  yellow  newspapers. 
Vingtoin  and  I  began  recounting  the  legends  of 
Dutot.  I  interrupted  with  the  request,  more  urgent 
than  before,  that  Vingtoin  dine  with  me.  The  Per- 
not  blanche  was  milkier  than  ever.  Vingtoin  was 
chiming  again  his,  "My  boy,  if  I  did  not  have  three 
thousand  words  to  write!"  .  .  .  when  I  beheld  a 
figure  approaching  up  the  rue  Auber,  approaching 
and  becoming  more  and  more  unmistakable.  "As  I 
live,  it  is  Dutot!" 

It  was.  We  had  not,  we  three  musketeers,  been 
together  for  many  years.  The  platters  telling  the 
tale  of  the  Pernot  blanches  grew  gaily  in  number. 
Paris  was  ringing  in  our  veins;  Paris,  and  memories 
of  the  land  beyond  seas,  of  New  York  and  New  Or- 
leans and  St.  Louis. 

"But,"  said  I,  "it  is  time  we  dined."  I  refused  to 
hear  Vingtoin's  mumbling  about  "three  thousand 
words."  I  reminded  them  both  that  Madame  was 
still  hungry  and  weary  from  the  journey.  We  must 
join  her  and  all  dine.  Vingtoin's  murmur  faded;  he 
and  his  monocle  remained.  In  a  few  moments  we 
had  haled  forth  Madame,  and  she  was  in  the  babble 
of  names,  and  songs,  and  laughter  that  our  remi- 
niscences resounded  with.  She  is,  thank  fate,  humor- 
ously used  to  it.  To  hear  her  say  the  names  of  "Paul 
Verlai-ne,  and  Rosset-t-i,  and  Chappiell-6-h!"  is  to 
go  off  into  shrieks  of  laughter.  She  thinks  us  all 


ii6  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

mildly  insane,  and  she  knows  no  more  of  art  than  to 
be  beautiful.  For  which  I  humbly  thank  my  stars 
many  times  a  day.  So,  on  this  memorable  day  of  our 
debut  in  Paris,  she  fell  admirably  into  the  frolic. 

The  four  of  us  bundled  into  a  cab,  the  cabman 
cracked  his  silly  whip,  and  down  the  boulevard  we 
went  toward  the  Madeleine.  At  the  corners  of  the 
rue  Royale  and  the  boulevards  sit  many  Americans, 
at  Durand's  and  other  places,  who  know  no  better. 
But  Dutot  did.  He  led  us  to  Lucas'.  Many  a  time 
thereafter  we  were  to  give  the  glad  word  to  our 
Jehu,  "chez  Lucas"  and  to  dine  in  the  open,  with  all 
the  gay  and  mournful  come-and-go  past  the  Made- 
leine before  us,  but  never  again  were  we  to  have  such 
a  dinner  as  this.  What  a  dinner  it  was !  Also,  the 
Pernots  blanches  had  built  a  terrific  appetite. 

There  was,  I  think,  a  crayfish  soup.  There  was 
duck,  and  there  was  a  Macedoine  of  fruit,  and  a  good 
deal  of  honest  good  wine,  yclept  ordinary.  But  the 
bare  names  of  these  things  do  not  tell  of  the  delights 
of  that  dinner.  It  was  the  perfect  cooking,  the  per- 
fect gaiety  that  made  it  a  unique  occasion,  and  though 
in  other  places  we  were  to  sample  many  other  epicu- 
rean delights,  the  utter  zest  of  that  dinner  remains 
a  sweet  morsel  upon  the  mind. 

Vingtoin  had  ceased  mentioning  the  three  thousand 
words.  His  monocle  was  more  rigid  than  ever. 
Dutot  grew  more  and  more  inventive.  When  our 
thoughts  approached  coffee  he  invented  our  exodus 
from  Lucas'.  "We  will  go,"  said  he,  "to  Maxim's." 
It  is  only  two  blocks,  but  I  think  we  took  a  cab.  I 
am  a  little  hazy  about  the  cabs.  The  others  cannot 
verify  any  better  than  I  can.  But  I  know  we  got  to 


THE    COURTESAN    OF    CITIES     117 

Maxim's.  "The  Girl  from  Maxim's"  had  not  yet 
arrived;  it  was  too  early  in  the  evening  for  her.  She 
turns  up  a  little  before  midnight  and  lines  the  inside 
of  Maxim's  with  her  elegance  and  her  cocottish  type 
of  good  looks.  She  makes  a  sort  of  wallpaper  for 
Maxim's;  into  the  rooms  so  papered  Americans  walk 
with  an  almost  admirable  docility.  Maxim's  is  not 
yet  so  utterly  empty  of  real  Parisians  as  is  the  Moulin 
Rouge,  but  it  is  getting  there.  Its  vice  is,  of  course, 
very  expensive,  and  it  is  not  so  obvious  as  the  vice  of 
the  Moulin  Rouge;  besides,  it  is  a  place  where,  after 
a  certain  hour,  the  American  girl  does  not  often 
enter.  So  the  American  youth  makes  hay  there. 

The  stars  were  in  the  heavens,  the  coffee  in  our 
cups,  and  the  Pernot  blanche  taking  counsel  with  the 
good  red  wine.  The  result  of  this  counsel  was  that 
we  must  all  go  cabward  once  more.  It  may  have 
been  the  same  cab.  It  may  have  been  another.  I  do 
not  remember.  It  does  not  matter.  All  cabs  in 
Paris  are  noisy  as  to  whip,  reckless  as  to  career  and 
cheap  as  to  price, — unless  you  use  them  as  Dutot  and 
Vingtoin  did  that  morning.  But  hold — it  was  not 
morning  yet.  Over  the  Place  de  la  Concorde  we 
drove.  Vingtoin  was  grown  romantic.  "There 
Marie  Antoinette  was  beheaded,"  said  he,  pointing, 
"and  there  Louis !"  and  he  pointed.  And  which  was 
Louis'  esteemed  number  I  did  not  hear,  or  care,  for 
the  night  was  too  fine  to  think  of  murders  and  sud- 
den death.  But  Vingtoin  raved  all  the  way  up  the 
Champs-Elysees;  he  raved  of  the  historic  delights  of 
his  Paris,  of  the  emotions  this  stone  and  that  street 
gave  him;  he  raved  past  the  glittering,  will-o'-the- 
wisp  lights  among  the  trees,  the  Marigny,  the  Jardin 


n8  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

de  Paris,  the  Alcazar  d'Ete;  he  raved  romantically 
and  eloquently,  the  while  I  listened  and  wondered 
what  the  Macedoine  was  made  of,  and  what  a  beauti- 
ful benefaction  was  the  making  of  Pernot  blanche. 
While  Vingtoin  raved  Dutot  chaffed  the  cabman. 
But  we  got  to  the  Elysee  Palace  in  good  order.  For 
it  was  here  we  were  to  have  more  coffee  and  cognac. 
This  was  to  be  Turkish  coffee.  Therefore,  being 
seated  on  the  glittering  lounge,  Dutot  hailed  the 
oriental  henchman  fiercely.  Elaborately  dressed 
diners  sat  about  talking  English  and  all  the  other 
languages;  we  were  not  elaborately  dressed,  but  we 
were  elaborately  gay,  and  we  cheered  Dutot  on. 

"Avance-toi  id"  quoth  Dutot,  and  the  grinning 
darky  came  up  to  the  very  edge  of  the  table.  Where- 
upon, for  Dutot's  benefit,  he  had  to  give  a  specimen 
of  every  language  he  knew, — and  he  seemed  to  know 
them  nearly  all. 

By  this  time  Vingtoin  and  Dutot  had  struck  up  a 
duet,  having  for  its  object  my  permanent  residence 
in  Paris.  They  assured  me  that  my  fortune,  if  I 
stayed,  was  as  good  as  made.  Their  argument,  in 
cold  statistics,  was  not  much  more  exact  than  if  I  were 
to  assert,  as  a  piece  of  stirring  news,  the  fact  that 
God  feeds  the  sparrows.  But  they  assured  me,  with 
complete  accord,  that  I  could  live  beautifully,  work 
but  three  hours  a  day  and  enjoy  the  delights  of  their 
society  into  the  bargain.  Taking  me  aside,  Dutot 
assured  me  that  he  knew,  he  absolutely  knew,  I  could 
make  as  much  as  Vingtoin  was  making.  But,  I  told 
him,  Vingtoin  has  the  language  perfectly. 

"Bah!"  said  Dutot,  "he  doesn't  speak  French  any 
better  than  you  do !" 


THE    COURTESAN    OF    CITIES     119 

I  have  thought  about  that  remark  a  good  deal.  I 
can't  help  thinking  there  is  a  slight  in  it,  either  for 
Vingtoin  or  for  me.  Or  is  it  for  both  of  us?  But  I 
forget;  you  have  never  heard  my  French.  .  .  . 

The  next  moment  Vingtoin  had  drawn  me  aside. 
He  vowed  that  if  Dutot  could  make  a  living  in  Paris, 
I  could.  He  cited  a  great  many  figures  and  facts. 

Yet  my  foolish  modesty  prevented  my  admitting 
the  belief  that  I  could  possibly  be  as  prosperous  in 
Paris  as  these  two.  It  did  not  seem  even  hazily  pos- 
sible. But,  after  all,  I  don't  know;  before  the  morn- 
ing was  finished  one  of  them  borrowed  money  of  me. 
Wild  horses  will  not  make  me  tell  which  one  it  was. 
But  the  relief  that  act  was  to  my  self-respect  was 
worth  twice  the  price. 

This  time  it  was,  I  know,  the  identical  cab  that  we 
bundled  into,  having  imbibed  our  thick  Turkish  coffee 
and  sufficiently  deviled  the  servitor.  What  our  route 
was  I  shall  never  be  able  to  say,  but  I  know  where 
we  got  to,  because  Dutot  chanted  the  name  all  the 
way,  in  such  time  as  he  was  not  assuring  the  cabman 
that  he  could  drive  much  better  than  himself.  It  was 
"chez  Barratte"  that  we  were  bound  for,  and  it  was 
the  onion  soup  we  were  after.  Barratte's  is  near  the 
Central  Markets,  and  early  in  the  morning  fashion- 
able folk  come  a  slumming  thither  for  the  lovely 
soup,  much  as  in  New  Orleans  one  went  to  old 
Mother  Whatshername — Begue — for  her  wonderful 
buzzard's  breath  soup.  We  were  too  early  for  the 
fashionable  folk,  and  had  the  place  almost  to  our- 
selves, and  the  soup  was  glorious,  despite  Madame's 
remarks  to  the  contrary. 

But  Dutot  was  not  content.     He  cried  aloud  for 


120  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

"Al-fred!"  with  all  the  accent  on  the  fred.  At  last 
Alfred  appeared,  ancient  and  smiling,  an  ancient 
waiter,  as  fine  a  type  as  you  may  rarely  see.  When 
Dutot  was  a  student  Alfred  had  served  him,  had  fed 
him,  had  loaned  him  money,  wherefore  now  one  must 
not  forget  Alfred.  Alfred  was  reputed  well  off;  his 
son  was  a  doctor  with  a  fashionable  practice;  but 
Alfred  continued  to  be,  as  all  his  life,  chez  Barratte. 
We  drank  Alfred's  health  in  more  red  wine,  and 
Dutot  embraced  Alfred.  It  was  very  affecting. 

Vingtoin,  meanwhile,  grew  more  eloquent  behind 
his  monocle.  We  were  all  to  do  Paris  together.  Not 
the  Baedeker  things ;  no,  the  corners  you  could  not  put 
into  guide-books,  the  associations  only  intimacy  and 
personality  could  make  dear.  Some  of  the  regula- 
tion things,  perhaps,  but  even  these  from  the  view- 
point of  the  insider,  not  the  outsider.  The  Bal 
Bullier,  the  Red  Mill,  the  Quarter,  Montmartre, 
the  cabarets  of  heaven  and  hell,  the  brasseries 
of  the  boulevards — all  these  Vingtoin  was  to  usher 
us  into. 

Well,  we  did  all  of  these  things  and  many  more; 
we  dined  at  the  Dead  Rat,  and  we  scaled  the  Boul 
Miche  to  the  Bullier;  we  browsed  along  the  street 
of  the  Old  Pigeon  and  the  street  of  Mr.  the  Prince; 
we  sampled  the  books  of  the  Quay  Voltaire  and  the 
Odeon;  we  dined  on  all  the  sanded  floors  of  the 
Boulevard  Montmartre,  and  we  went,  at  dawn,  along 
the  streets  of  the  Fourth  of  September  and  the  Little 
Fields  to  see  the  Markets  in  their  fruity  glory — but 
not  with  Vingtoin,  not  with  Vingtoin. 

No ;  not  with  Vingtoin.  Many  things  were  to  hap- 
pen to  Vingtoin,  and  to  Dutot,  but  not  the  things  that 


THE    COURTESAN    OF    CITIES      121 

they  intended  to  have  happen.  Man  proposes  and 
Pernot  blanche  confuses. 

It  is  fortunate  Madame  and  I  were  worn  out  by 
our  journey  early  in  the  day.  Or  there  is  no  knowing 
what  might  not  have  befallen  us.  As  it  was,  after 
Vingtoin  had  succeeded  in  preventing  Dutot  from 
driving  the  cab,  we  steered  for  our  hotel,  and  there, 
with  explicit  plans  for  the  morrow,  parted.  On  the 
morrow  I  was  to  go  wheeling  with  Vingtoin.  I  re- 
member it  as  if  it  were  yesterday. 

And  that  is  the  last  I  saw  of  Vingtoin. 

DEAR  me,  I  wonder  if  he  ever  got  his  three  thou- 
sand words  written,  and  if  he  went  wheeling!  Not 
with  me,  he  didn't,  I  know.  And  from  what  I  was 
able  to  gather  of  the  subsequent  proceedings  I  think 
neither  Vingtoin  nor  Dutot  were  doing  anything  at 
all  on  the  morrow.  The  facts  came  to  me  in  frag- 
ments, but  the  fragments  are  enough  to  assure  me 
that  it  was  a  very  large  morning  for  our  section  of 
America  in  Paris.  Had  I  mentioned  that  all  this  hap- 
pened on  the  night  between  the  3rd  and  4th  of  July? 
Ah,  me,  these  American  Fourths  in  Paris!  Ask 
Vingtoin  and  Dutot,  if  you  doubt  me. 

From  the  fragments,  then,  I  know  this  much :  they 
went  back  to  Maxim's.  There  Dutot  asserted  his 
tact  by  renewing  acquaintance  with  a  waiter  at  whom 
he  had  once  thrown  a  plate.  Thence,  somehow, 
vaguely,  mistily,  they  got  to  Suresnes  and  to  Ver- 
sailles. In  one  place  Vingtoin  insisted  on  buying  a 
straw  hat  for  the  cab  horse;  in  another  they  bor- 
rowed money;  in  another  Dutot  slept  for  hours  in  the 
cab,  while  Vingtoin  mingled  with  liquors. 


122  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

The  valley  of  the  Seine  reeks,  I  think,  with  the 
marks  of  that  morning's  cab  ride.  When  Dutot  was 
brought  finally  home,  he  made  the  cabman  a  present 
of  some  rabbits  for  the  cabman's  children.  The 
mere  fag-end  of  the  cab  bill  was  fifty  francs.  The 
total  bill,  like  the  remarks  made  by  the  Dutot  and 
Vingtoin  spouses,  when  their  husbands  arrived  in  the 
glare  of  noonday,  their  sins  and  their  potations  heavy 
upon  them,  I  refuse  to  chronicle. 

But,  oh,  how  I  would  like  to  know  the  exact  move- 
ments of  those  two  after  they  left  us!  I  can  still 
hear  Vingtoin's  refrains,  first  of  the  three  thousand 
words  he  had  to  write,  and  then  of  the  wheel  ride  we 
were  to  take  together ;  I  can  still  hear  Dutot  shouting 
for  "Alfred";  and  the  whole  night  is  as  if  it  were 
yesterday.  But  I  shall  never  know  just  what  hap- 
pened. No  one  will  ever  know.  For  I  have  never 
seen  them  again.  I  hope  they  are  both  alive.  I 
should  be  sorry  to  think  otherwise.  They  were  go- 
ing to  show  me  Paris,  but  that  is  a  minor  detail. 
What  I  want  to  know  is,  did  Vingtoin  write  his  three 
thousand  words? 

But,  whether  he  did  or  not,  whether  he  and  Dutot 
showed  us  Paris  or  not,  they  had  done  one  thing 
completely,  perfectly: 

They  had  assisted  most  nobly  at  a  Parisian  debut. 


THE    COURTESAN    OF    CITIES     123 
II 

THE   SHATTERING   OF   A   LEGEND 

DAWN  brings  hope  more  often  than  does  sunset, 
which,  for  most  of  us,  only  gilds  regret.  Youth 
makes  a  monomania  of  enthusiasm;  experience 
brings  the  senses  into  proportion.  Hardly  one  of  us 
for  whom  Paris  has  not  meant,  at  one  time,  part  of 
youth,  only  to  take  on,  afterward,  the  lines  of  some- 
what haggard  age.  The  dreams  and  the  legends 
were  lovely;  let  us  never  regret  the  gay  moments  in 
which  we  helped  to  lift  up  those  dreams  and  legends, 
made  them  come  true  because  we  wished  it  so;  but — 
let  us  admit  also  that  we  have  not  altogether  escaped 
the  tawdry  truth  that  sometimes  lurked  behind  the 
legend.  Once  the  halo  of  romance  takes  to  thin  air, 
and — behold  the  paint  cracking,  the  perfume  reeking 
stale  as  spent  liquor,  and  the  Actual  making  ugly 
faces  at  us.  How  many,  many  dreams  and  legends 
youth  and  Paris  have  conspired  to  build! 

The  legend,  for  example,  of  Maxim's.  How  mad 
and  glad  and  bad  it  was,  and  oh,  how  it  was  false! 

"Maxim's!"  The  name  evoked,  according  as 
you  were  young  or  old,  keen  for  pleasure  or  sated 
with  it,  the  most  glittering  anticipations  or  the  most 
roseate  recollections.  One  never  is,  however,  so 
much  as  one  is  to  be,  or  has  been  blessed — in  this 
case,  as  in  so  many  others.  The  golden  haze  of  pros- 
pective or  perspective  filmed  inevitably  our  picture 
of  the  place  that  so  demurely  sits  beneath  the  Made- 
leine and  in  sight  of  where  Marie  Antoinette  lost  her 
head  forever  as  composedly  as  now  the  ladies  of 


124  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

Maxim's  fix  their  complexions  for  the  night.  Of  all 
spots  in  the  world  of  pleasure,  this  one  seemed  most 
alloyed  with  legend,  most  enveiled  in  play  and  story. 
Of  all  such  spots,  it  was  the  hardest  to  distinguish 
in  its  actual  form  from  the  lovely  dream  of  it  that 
purveyors  of  play  and  fiction,  that  viveurs  in  their 
anecdotage  and  striplings  in  their  legend-tinted  hopes, 
have  spun.  The  past  and  the  future  glorify  Maxim's, 
even  as  Paris  herself  is  glorified  in  memory  and  in 
approach;  artists  in  paint,  in  words  and  in  drama 
conspire  to  color  it  with  rose  and  gold;  what  is  ob- 
scure is  the  actual,  the  present — the  real  Maxim's,  as 
you  and  I,  mes  amis,  know  it  in  the  moments  when 
we  permit  the  actual  to  remain  the  actual,  and  our- 
selves to  retain  that  rarest  of  all  visions,  the  normal. 

The  real  Maxim's,  is  it  indeed,  seen  soberly,  seen 
clearly,  the  splendid  sensuous  dream  of  all  that  haze 
of  memory,  of  play  and  story  and  picture  that  is 
so  definite  a  fraction  of  the  modern  primrose  path? 
Is  it,  indeed,  the  Maxim's  of  the  song  and  of  the 
stage?  ^  , 

Is  it  impertinent,  is  it  unpleasant,  to  inquire,  to  go 
behind  the  scenes?  When  the  scenes  themselves  are 
so  lovely,  why  finger  them  to  see  if  they  are  papier- 
mache?  Because,  if  you  please,  contrast  is  one  of  the 
most  interesting  things  in  the  world,  for  one  thing; 
and  because,  for  another,  there  is  hardly  a  more  as- 
tonishing instance  in  the  world  of  to-day  of  how  the 
name  of  a  small  Parisian  shopkeeper  may  become 
advertised  to  all  civilization  without  its  owner  having 
ever,  apparently,  used  a  single  one  of  the  direct 
methods  of  reclame.  And  because,  finally,  it  may  be 
entertaining  to  consider  a  little  the  picture,  the  le- 


THE    COURTESAN    OF    CITIES      125 

gends  and  the  songs  that  went  to  the  making  famous 
of  the  Maxim  dream. 

Though  it  is  nearly  two  decades  since  the  thrifty 
Parisian  of  the  Rue  Royale  persuaded  the  author  of 
"La  Dame  de  Chez  Maxime"  to  advertise  abroad 
his  cuisine's  virtue  and  his  customers'  lack  of  it,  that 
farce  marks,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  the  begin- 
ning of  the  Maxim  legend.     Between  that  play  and 
"Die  Lustige   Witwe,"   our  young  century's  most 
popular  operetta,  there  is  a  wealth  of  theatric  use  of 
the  resort  we  are  now  considering.     If  it  was  "Die 
Lustige  Witwe"  coming  from  Vienna,  which  most 
effectively   impressed   the   legend   of    Maxim's    de- 
lights and  Maxim's  ladies — "of  course,"  as  Nish 
has  it,  "when  I  say  ladies    .    .     .          upon  that  sec- 
tion of  the  world  whose  happiness  is  in  the  pursuit  of 
pleasure,  it  is  not  to  be  denied  that  Lehar's  little 
masterpiece  had  planty  of  forerunners  in  the  way  of 
plays  that  pictured  the  aforesaid  delights  and  the 
aforesaid  ladies.    The  life  of  the  corks  that  pop,  and 
of  the  damsels  whose  faces  are  their  fortunes,  has 
always    had    a    certain    attraction    on    the    stage. 
Whether  it  was  the  cork-room  of  Koster  &  Dial's,  or 
the  cabinets  of  the  "Poodle  Dog"  in  "A  Trip  to 
Chinatown,"  or  the  chambre  separee  of  Schnitzler's 
"Abschied's-Souper,"  or  the  bald  suggestiveness  of 
a  piece  like  "The  Turtle,"  there  has  always  been  ap- 
plause for  these  scenes.     The  "cabinet  particulier" 
of  Paris  becomes  in  Teuton  usuage  of  the  Parisian 
tongue  the  chambre  separee;  but  the  article  is  the 
same,  and  the  picture  of  it  on  the  stage  can  ever  be 
counted  on  to  pleasantly  affect  the  spectators.    How 
much  more  pleasant,  then,  the  spectacle,  upon  the 


126  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

stage,  of  a  magnified,  a  multiplied  cabinet — a  very 
heaven  (or  hell;  you  have  your  choice!)  of  cabi- 
nets— like  Maxim's! 

Of  the  pieces  entirely  revolving  upon  the  vogue 
of  the  resort,  the  most  frank  originated  in  Berlin. 
To  see  "Die  Herren  Von  Maxim's"  ("The  Men  of 
Maxim's"),  was  to  have  one's  notion  of  German 
solidity  in  the  theater  roughly  shocked.  In  that 
revue  of  the  Metropol-Theater  was  a  plot  based 
upon  a  wager,  made  by  the  most  conspicuous  rasta- 
quouere  of  the  period,  that  in  eighty  days  he  would 
accomplish  a  victory  over  eighty  consecutive  ladies. 
"Of  course,  when  I  say  ladies  .  .  .  vide 

our  friend  Nish !  You  may  imagine  the  opportunity 
this  wager,  made  in  Maxim's,  by  one  of  the  fashion- 
ables who  frequented  it,  and  about  the  fashionably 
frail  who  compose  its  population,  gave  for  spectacu- 
lar song  and  scene  upon  the  stage.  Again,  in  "La 
Duchesse  des  Folies  Bergeres" — played  in  German 
as  "Herzogin  Crevette" — we  had  a  plot  in  which  a 
one-time  star  in  the  elysium  of  the  Rue  Royale  had 
married,  but  steals  away  to  revisit — despite  her  hus- 
band, her  title,  and  all  her  responsibilities — the 
glimpses  of  her  less  monogamous  past.  You  may 
conceive,  even  where  you  do  not  remember,  the 
gaiety  of  the  young  woman's  return  to  the  scene  of 
her  triumphs,  the  delight  of  her  former  comrades  in 
amours  as  well  as  arms,  and  the  perplexity  that  en- 
sues when  there  is  danger  of  her  husband  finding  her 
again,  his  wife,  where  once  he  had  found  her,  before 
he  made  her  his  wife. 

We  sighed  almightily  at  these  stories,  once  upon  a 
time,  and  pretended  they  were  so  French  as  to  be 


THE    COURTESAN    OF    CITIES     127 

quite  foreign  to  our  understanding.  We  pretended 
to  forget  that  these  things  happen  daily  in  our  own 
Puritan  regions,  only  we  have  not  the  art  of  gilding 
every  detail  in  the  episode  as  have  our  friends  in 
Paris.  A  millionaire  of  ours  marries,  and  we  know 
where  his  wife  comes  from,  and  it  is  not  as  pretty  a 
place  as  even  the  real  Maxim's;  a  great  painter 
paints  her  portrait,  and  we  admire  it,  but  we  whisper; 
she  is  left  a  widow  and  her  millions  bring  another 
husband  from  those  who  whispered;  our  world  is  the 
same,  in  the  whole  and  the  half,  as  any  other  world, 
whether  we  dim  our  vision  with  the  Puritan  mask  or 
not.  Only  we  seem  never  to  have  the  trick  of  giving 
wickedness  so  fully  the  air  of  a  polite  game  between 
ladies  and  gentlemen  as  have  our  fellows  across  the 
Atlantic. 

It  was  when  we  compared  the  stage  pictures  of 
Maxim's  in  the  European  performances  of  "The 
Merry  Widow"  to  those  in  the  American  production 
that  we  most  clearly  saw  that  while  we  are  able  to 
picture,  theatrically,  a  place  that  may  snare  the 
fancies  of  the  unsophisticated  who  confuse  sin  with 
noise,  and  vice  with  hilarity,  we  cannot  yet  reproduce 
such  scenes  as,  in  the  Viennese  and  London  versions, 
made  this  operetta  one  of  the  most  potent  and  dan- 
gerous fostering  forces  of  the  legend.  While  in  our 
American  version  of  "Die  Lustige  Witwe"  Maxim's 
was  painted  sufficiently  gay,  and  cheery,  and  un- 
conventional, to  suit  the  most  obvious  form  of  the 
legend,  it  is  not  to  this  version  that  I  would  contrast 
the  real  article.  That  contrast  is  not  wide  enough. 
These  ladies,  after  all — "and  when  I  say  ladies 
.  .  .  were  somewhat  nasally  voiced,  and  a  bit 


128  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

loud,  and  there  are  men,  of  just  the  sort  supposed  to 
support  the  legendary  Maxim's,  who  would  not  find 
them  in  the  least  fascinating,  but  only  rather  noisy. 
As  for  the  males — well,  like  so  fatally  many  Ameri- 
can stage  creatures — they  looked  hardly  gentlemen; 
not  even  a  "run"  of  six  hundred  nights  enabled  them 
to  wear  their  clothes  as  if  either  to  the  manner  or  to 
Maxim's  born. 

No,  it  was  abroad  that  one  looked  for  the  finest 
flights  of  fancy  on  the  point.  We  imported  uThe 
Merry  Widow"  two  years  after  its  birth  in  Vienna; 
just  as  several  years  after  their  Opera  Comique  suc- 
cesses we  imported  that  essence  of  Paris  itself  that 
Charpentier  called  "Louise,"  and  that  essence  of  an 
earlier  Paris  that  Pierre  Louys  and  Camille  Erlanger 
called  "Aphrodite";  but  we  lack  the  actors  and 
actresses  to  give  all  those  essences  their  vitality.  As 
"Louise"  is  all  Paris,  the  desire  for  it,  the  dream, 
and  the  delusion,  so  the  one  final  scene  in  "The 
Merry  Widow,"  as  played  in  London  and  Vienna, 
was  all  the  Maxim  dream  and  legend  in  its  essence. 
Here  were  the  glitter  of  the  lights,  the  waiters, 
silent,  fleet  and  without  scruple;  the  musicians,  gay 
and  garish;  the  swell  mob  of  males,  princes,  poten- 
tates, cosmopolites,  men  of  every  world,  splendid  in 
black  and  white,  insolent  in  their  strength.  And 
here,  before  all  else,  are 

Lo  Lo,  Dodo,  Joujou, 

Cloclo,  Margot,  Froufrou, 
and  all  the  others  in  that  paradise  where 

"Surnames  do  not  matter, 

We  take  the  first  to  hand." 
These  were  girls  whom  by  a  minute  change  in 


THE    COURTESAN    OF    CITIES     129 

point  of  view  any  man  might  really  take  for  ladies. 
Merry,  but  beautiful.    They  were  clothed  most  won- 
drously,    and  they   seemed   most   wondrous   sweet. 
Only  a  poet — who  need  not  always  be  a  gentleman ! 
— would  insult  one  of  these  by  declaring  her 
.     .     .     fair  in  the  fearless  old  fashion, 
And  thy  limbs  are  as  melodies  yet, 
And  move  to  the  music  of  passion     .     .     . 
or  reminding  us  that 

the  kisses  of  her  bought  red  mouth  were  sweet. 
As  in  the  case  of  Rossetti's  "Jenny,"  these  damsels, 
whose  metier  was  supposed  to  be  Maxim's,  were  so 
delightful  as  to  cause  us  to  shudder  when  we  think 
how  easily  they  might  be  young  persons  whose  names 
appear  in  the  chronicles  of  fashion.  Our  cousin  Nell, 
fond  of  fun,  and  fond  of  love,  and  fond  of  change, 
may  so  easily  become  like  "Jenny,"  or  like  these  "lit- 
tle Paris  ladies"  of  "The  Merry  Widow"  !  The  dif- 
ference is  so  slight,  so  thin;  that  was  just  the  danger 
in  these  stage  pictures  of  that  place  upon  the  Rue 
Royale  where  the  feminine  frequenters  nightly  solve 
the  secret  of  nocturnal  beauty.  Where  we  see  a 
somewhat  noisy,  vulgar  picture  of  the  place,  it  has 
for  us,  if  we  have  aught  of  finer  sensibilities,  no 
charm  at  all;  but  where  the  picture  is  alive  with 
lovely,  merry,  discreet  beauties  in  perfect  taste  and 
perfect  gowns,  and  with  men  whose  attire  makes  us 
dissatisfied  with  our  own  tailors,  and  whose  manner 
makes  their  vices  wear  a  proper  gloss,  there  lies  real 
danger. 

THE  legend — whatever  hint  one  has  here  to  give 
of  its  causes — is  perhaps  as  potent  a  one  as  the  world 


130  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

of  pleasure  knows.  Far  dwellers  in  an  unsophisti- 
cated West  imagine  that  the  pinnacles  of  possibilities 
in  riotous  living  are,  one  the  one  hand,  Maxim's,  and 
on  the  other,  Monte  Carlo.  Do  you  tell  the  would-be 
gallant  of  the  backwoods  that  you  have  been  in  Paris 
now  and  again?  He  winks  at  you  and  says, 
"Maxim's,  eh?"  Discuss  the  a-las  of  to-day  with  an 
ancient  amateur  of  Parisian  cuisine,  and  he  may  at 
any  moment  break  into  fabulous  recollections  of  what 
a  devil  he  was  at  Maxim's  "in  the  eighties." 

So  far  the  dream     .     .     . 

A  fine  conceit,  in  truth,  and  hard  enough  to  sep- 
arate from  fact.  For  the  object  is  one  to  which  most 
folk  do  not  bring  a  sober,  normal  vision.  They 
visit  the  place  illumined  by  the  legend  and  by  liquor. 

Whereas,  the  fact     .     .     . 

THERE  may  be  many  other  places  in  the  world  to- 
day where  the  legend  lives  on  liquor,  and  there  cer- 
tainly was  one  yesterday;  that  was  the  Whitechapel 
Club  in  Chicago.  There  was  no  fun  going  into  it 
soberly.  Soberly  considered,  it  was  merely  foul, 
blasphemous  and  brutal. 

Soberly  considered — but  Maxim's  should  not  be 
soberly  considered,  if  the  legend  is  to  be  preserved. 

Of  the  daytime,  it  is  not  germane  to  write.  The 
legend  says  nothing  of  the  daytime  Maxim's.  So  it 
need  not  hurt  the  legend  if  we  remark  that  it  is  pos- 
sible, passing  from  the  Place  de  la  Concorde  toward 
the  Madeleine,  to  observe  nothing  whatever  of  the 
existence  of  Maxim's,  any  more  than  of  Weber's  or 
of  Lucas'.  If  you  went  in  before  candlelight,  you 
would  find  emptiness,  sleepy  but  insolent  waiters  and 


THE    COURTESAN    OF    CITIES     131 

the  general  somnolence  of  a  spider  awaiting  prey. 
The  tables  on  the  trottoir  yawn;  these  hours,  for 
Maxim's,  are  as  the  night  hours  to  a  farmer. 

Maxim's  at  night!  Ah — how  they  smiled,  those 
dear  fellows  who  once  tried  to  lure  me  on  toward 
the  legendary  home  of  all  the  Loreleis  of  the  Rue 
Royale !  For  I,  like  you  who  read  this,  had  fed  upon 
the  legend.  I  awaited — who  knows  what  wonders  I 
But  I  made,  alas,  the  great  mistake:  I  was  too  sober 
when  I  went  to  see  my  dream  come  true.  My  sober 
eyes  strayed  coldly  to  where,  along  the  walls,  the 
beauties  of  the  legend  sat.  .  .  .  Beauties?  They 
were  the  same  you  had  seen  at  the  Marigny,  at  the 
Folies  Bergeres,  everywhere.  Dressed  magnificently, 
but  impossibly,  they  were  never  for  one  sober  second 
to  be  mistaken  for  anything  but  what  they  were.  The 
paints,  the  enamels  and  the  powder  did  not  disguise 
the  hardness  in  their  only  rarely  handsome  faces. 
The  eyes,  the  eyes  of  the  vulture  and  the  vampire ; 
the  voices  not  those  of  sirens,  but  of  shrill,  false 
vulgarities.  The  waiters  had  the  dreadful  familiar- 
ity that  denotes  accomplices  in  crime.  The  guests — 
the  princes,  either  of  Marsovia  or  of  Pittsburg,  in 
the  legend — were  of  the  type  of  men  who  order 
steak  and  seek  cocktails  on  the  boulevards;  in  brief, 
the  Americans  who  belong  to  another  legend  alto- 
gether, the  unfortunately  verified  legend  of  the 
"Seeing  Chinatown"  cars  and  the  Cook's  tours.  Ill- 
fitting  evening  clothes  mingled  with  sombrero  hats. 
Bad  French  vied  with  nasal  United  States.  An 
orchestra  tried  to  drown  the  nasalities  with  its  own 
strident  notes.  The  ladies — "when  I  say  ladies,  of 
course  ..."  went  back  and  forth,  upstairs, 


132  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

through  curtains,  ever  swishing  perfume  too  palp- 
ably, ogling  too  brazenly,  shrilling  too  bravely  their 
laughter. 

"Come,"  said  my  friend,  the  Parisian  of  the 
Parisians,  he  who  has  told  all  the  diplomatic  mys- 
teries of  Europe  in  words  that  America  could  swal- 
low, he  who  has  reported  every  great  event  in  Paris 
for  the  last  fifteen  years,  and  known  all  the  rising 
litterateurs,  and  been  himself  the  finest  Franco- 
American  phenomenon  of  the  lot — "Come,"  said  he, 
"and  you  shall  see  the  really  interesting  spot,  where 
all  the  intimate  interviews  take  place;  where  Nini 
and  Fifi  meet  the  princes  and  the  incognito  foreign- 
ers, and  where "  And  he  led  me  to  the  curtain 

where  at  one  side  went  the  men,  the  other  the 
women,  at  moments  when  they  wished  to  be  alone. 
And  that  was  the  precious,  famous  spot !  The  reek 
of  powder,  of  cigarettes,  was  just  the  same  reek  that 
is  always  behind  such  curtains  all  the  world  over. 
And  in  that  milieu,  where  Nini  was  about  to  confer 
with  Fifi  as  to  the  value  of  the  evening's  catch,  were 
supposed  to  take  place  the  romantic  discoverings  of 
the — shall  I  say  "affinities"  that  have  gone  to  the 
Maxim  legend! 

No;  it  was  not  for  sober  view.  Garish,  rather 
than  brilliant.  More  expensive  than  the  Haymar- 
ket,  but  none  too  remote  from  it  in  method.  Tired 
were  the  dancers  when  they  were  not  inebriate ;  dull 
were  the  poisoned  eyes  when  they  did  not  sparkle 
with  greed.  If  the  dresses  had  sat  there  empty,  if 
the  powder  and  the  perfume  had  floated  forth,  but 
from  no  bodily  encircling  skirts,  the  lover  of  the 
legend  might  quite  easily  have  peopled  the  place 


THE    COURTESAN    OF    CITIES     133 

with  the  fair  ones  of  his  dream.  But  these!  The 
harpies  of  the  world;  no  other  than  the  harpies  of 
the  Friedrichstrasse,  of  the  London  promenades, 
and  of  the  lobster  palaces  in  the  borough  of  Man- 
hattan. 

Beautiful?    Yes.    Gay?    Yes.    Desirable?    Yes. 
Provided  always  that  you  came  immersed  in  legend 
or  in  liquor.    The  one  or  the  other  made  the  greedy 
eyes   look  kind,    the   vapid  lips   seem   merry,    the 
rastas   look   like    princes,    and,    in   brief,    the   real 
Maxim's  look  like  the  Maxim's  of 
Lolo,  Dodo,  Joujou, 
Cloclo,  Margot,  Froufrou. 

the  Maxim's  of  "La  Dame  de  chez  Maxim,"  and  of 
the  final  scene  in  that  operetta  in  which  Franz  Lehar 
scored  the  greatest  international  success  our  world 
has  known  in  a  quarter  of  a  century. 

With  that  inevitable  bias  toward  the  absurd  that 
begins  to  mark  the  progress  of  our  puritan  decline, 
there  were  those  in  whom  the  final  scene  in  "The 
Merry  Widow"  evoked  remonstrance.  To  repro- 
duce, upon  the  stage,  a  place  like  that.  .  .  . 
Unmindful  of  the  other  dozen  or  so  of  plays  that 
had  helped  to  build  the  legend,  these  good  people 
entirely  overlooked  the  essential  truth  that  the  place 
itself  never  was  anything  like  the  brilliant  dream  of 
fair  women  which  the  theater  and  fiction  imposed 
upon  our  imagination. 

"The  corks  go  pop,"  as  the  air  has  it;  "we  dance 
and  never  stop";  and  that  is  quite  true;  but  the  peo- 
ple behind  the  "pop"  differ  but  little  from  the  wine- 
openers  of  Broadway,  and  from  the  dancers  of  any 
"swell  ball"  that  engages  the  presence  of  our  poli- 


134  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

ticians,    our    bookmakers,    our    "pugs"    and    their 
brides. 

So,  once  again,  the  lie  has  grown  a  wonderful 
thing,  while  the  truth  is  a  thing  for  scorn.  There  is 
philosophy  in  that.  You  will  find  no  better  philos- 
ophy at  Maxim's,  the  real  Maxim's.  As  for  the 
Maxim's  of  legend — it  was  a  delightful  dream;  but 
— a  dream  no  less ! 

Ill 

PARIS   AS    IT    PASSES 

NOT  only  dreams  and  illusions,  but  old  landmarks 
succumb  to  time  and  progress  in  Paris  as  elsewhere. 
Most  men  who  have  fallen  under  the  spell  of  Paris 
have  counted  as  part  of  its  fascination  the  legend  of 
Maxim's,  and — that  legend  we  have  but  now  put  to 
the  ruthless  test  of  truth.  Another  item  in  its  fasci- 
nation, surely,  has  been  to  sit  at  the  Cafe  de  la  Paix. 
Was  it  not  there,  within  half  an  hour  of  entering 
Paris,  that  I  sat  with  Vingtoin.  .  .  ?  And  now 
there  is  rumor  that  the  Cafe  de  la  Paix  is  to  go. 

Who  that  has  not  written  or  declaimed  about 
Paris  but  has  insisted  upon  the  charm  of  that 
corner  of  the  boulevard  where  the  terrace  of  the 
Cafe  de  la  Paix  gives  not  only  upon  the  boulevard 
itself,  but  upon  the  magnificent  space  in  front  of  the 
Opera,  the  fine  descent  of  the  Avenue  de  1'Opera,  and 
even  the  terminal  of  that  most  hideous  and  common- 
place Parisian  thoroughfare,  the  Street  of  the  Fourth 
of  September?  Long  it  had  been  a  cherished  saying 
of  that  extinct  type,  the  boulevardier,  that  you  had 
only  to  sit  long  enough  at  one  of  the  little  round-top- 


THE    COURTESAN    OF    CITIES      135 

ped  tables  upon  that  terrace — let  us  use  that  direct 
translation  for  the  Frenchman's  "terrasse,"  meaning 
simply  the  portion  of  the  sidewalk  nearest  to  the 
building,  which  portion  the  cafe  proprietor  covers 
with  tables  and  chairs — to  see  all  the  celebrities  of 
the  world  go  by.  There  is  not  a  writer  in  English, 
from  Richard  Harding  Davis  up — or  down,  as  you 
may  choose  to  think — who  has  not  used  that  pleasant 
allusion.  It  is  a  fable  that  every  great  corner  in  every 
clime  has  arrogated  to  itself;  but  it  has  been  more 
true  of  that  Cafe  de  la  Paix  corner  than  of  most.  The 
boulevardier,  in  the  elder  comprehension,  is  now 
dead;  he  has  been  succeeded  by  the  Rasta,  from 
South  America,  and  the  millionaire,  from  North.  Is 
that  great  corner  itself  to  go;  or,  at  any  rate,  to 
change;  just  as  the  tribe  of  the  boulevardier  has 
changed?  To  be  succeeded,  then,  by  what? 

By  nothing  less,  or  more,  so  goes  report,  than  that 
Mecca  of  the  American  woman,  the  Bon  Marche. 
Such  plan  means  that  the  entire  block,  to  include  the 
Grand  Hotel,  will  be  torn  down  and  made  over  to 
accommodate  the  great  department  store  that  has 
piled  up  a  fortune  for  the  Maison  Boucicault.  Has 
then  indeed  the  rivalry  of  the  great  institutions  on  the 
"right"  bank  at  last  become  too  much  for  the  estab- 
lishment at  the  top  of  the  Rue  du  Bac,  that  it  has 
determined  to  array  itself  in  closer  conflict  and  proxi- 
mity against  the  Louvre,  the  Printemps,  and  the 
Galeries  Lafayette?  Americans  and  English,  it  has 
been  true,  have  not  much  minded  the  jaunt  over  to 
the  left  bank;  it  was  always  so  fatally  easy  to  fall 
into  the  cab  habit  and  simply  utter  syllables  to  the 
coachman.  Plenty  of  the  lumbering  old  omnibuses 


136  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

went  there,  too,  from  the  "imperiales"  of  which  you 
still  get  the  finest  views  of  Paris  in  its  most  central 
life  and  movement.  But,  despite  notions  to  the  con- 
trary, it  is  not  the  Americans  who  support  the  great 
shops  of  Paris ;  the  custom  most  desired  is  that  of  the 
Parisians  themselves.  What  the  American  buys,  let 
us  say,  once  a  year,  the  Parisian  is  buying  constantly, 
bewilderingly.  The  quantity  of  toilettes  that  a 
Parisian  woman,  whether  of  the  great  world  or  of 
the  several  that  touch  its  fringes,  will  get  through 
with  in  the  course  of  a  year  is  simply  amazing  to 
those  who  conceive  woman's  mission  in  the  world  as 
something  else  than  a  creature  to  be  dressed  and 
undressed. 

What  such  a  move  would  mean,  then,  is  that  the 
Parisians  themselves  have  gradually  been  tiring  of 
the  journey  across  the  Seine.  For,  with  the  exception 
of  a  few  old  families,  relics,  as  it  were  of  a  faded 
period,  the  people  with  money  to  spend  no  longer 
live  in  the  old  St.  Germain  quarter,  and  as  for  the 
new  district  building  up  behind  the  Eiffel  Tower, 
that  is  about  as  far  from  the  Rue  du  Bac  as  from  the 
Boulevard  Haussman. 

The  prosperity  of  the  Galeries  Lafayette  must 
have  become  familiar  to  even  the  most  casual  visitor 
to  Paris.  In  the  last  ten  years  alone,  not  to  speak  of 
still  smaller  beginnings,  it  has  expanded  across  the 
street,  until  now  its  newer  wing  on  the  Boulevard 
Haussman  opposite  the  simple  offices  of  the  great 
Morgan-Drexel-Harjes  banking  institution  is  larger 
than  the  parent  house  itself. 

It  has  become,  this  corner  of  the  Boulevard 
Haussman,  the  place  most  frequented  by  the  shopping 


THE    COURTESAN    OF    CITIES      137 

population  of  Paris.  If  you  wanted  to  see  the  busy 
folk,  bourgeois,  fashionable  and  super-fashionable, 
it  was  this  corner  you  had  need  to  observe.  The 
stream  of  idlers  that  made  perpetual  procession  be- 
fore the  Cafe  de  la  Paix  was  quite  another  matter. 
Before  those  little  round  tables,  whether  on  the 
boulevard  side  or  the  side  leading  toward  the  Opera, 
the  strollers  of  both  sexes  went  ceaselessly,  and 
never  a  moment  of  the  day  but  had  its  interest  for 
the  onlooker;  but  that  other  corner  behind,  not  be- 
fore, the  Opera,  that  corner  on  the  Haussman,  that 
was  where  the  fair  sex  reigned  supreme.  Here  were 
no  male  strollers;  there  was  not,  indeed,  any  strolling 
at  all ;  it  was  a  continual  coming  and  going  of  shop- 
pers, of  people  inspecting  the  wares  so  recklessly  dis- 
played upon  the  sidewalk  itself.  On  foot,  in  cabs, 
in  taxis,  and  in  their  own  carriages,  here  passed  all 
that  was  fair  in  Paris.  Man,  at  this  particular  spot, 
was  there  only  to  "stand  and  wait."  If  he  was  wise 
he  did  not  pass  beyond  those  portals  with  his  wife 
or  his  daughter  or  another  man's  ditto.  He  waited, 
meekly,  and  obtained  some  slight  reward  for  his  pa- 
tience in  watching  the  kaleidoscopic  colors  of  a  great 
Parisian  corner.  For,  though  all  were  in  a  hurry, 
some  there  were,  still,  who  took  advantage  of  that; 
hoarse  and  nasal-voiced  peddlers  of  postcards  im- 
ploring the  crowd  to  "demand  the  cards  postal  with 
Monsieur  Bleriot  and  his  aeroplane";  commission- 
aires from  the  shops,  assisting  carriage  folk  obse- 
quiously and  foot  folk  brusquely;  Americans  strug- 
gling with  the  dreadful  French  tongue,  only  to  find 
that  even  the  salesman  on  the  sidewalk  talked  perfect 
English;  and  many  other  fleeting  delights.  But  al- 


138  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

ways,  and  above  all  else:  woman.  Rarely  beautiful; 
but  turned  out,  oh,  turned  out  as,  beyond  question, 
no  other  woman  in  the  world  is  turned  out. 

THE  change  threatening  the  Cafe  de  la  Paix  cor- 
ner will  be  interesting  to  note.  The  result  may,  pos- 
sibly, intensify  the  present  attractiveness.  Hitherto 
a  corner  giving  upon  the  great  idling  and  curious 
throng,  it  may  now  take  on  something  of  the  nature 
of  that  other  corner,  just  described;  the  boulevard 
may  for  the  first  time  find,  upon  its  leisurely  borders, 
the  spectacle  of  the  great  mob  of  feminine  shoppers 
added  to  its  existing  charms.  For,  so  far,  none  of 
the  great  shops  in  Paris  have  been  actually  upon  the 
"grand"  boulevard.  Not,  that  is,  any  of  the  great 
department  shops.  There  is  the  "Trois  Quartiers" 
across  from  the  Madeleine;  then,  beyond  the  Opera, 
is  the  great  "White"  establishment;  but  these  par- 
take in  no  way  of  general  department  shops.  Far, 
far  down,  almost  as  far  as  the  Place  de  la  Repub- 
lique,  are  some  Galeries  St.  Martin,  where  excellent 
perfumery  is  sold  cheaply;  but  to  all  intents  the  big 
places  have  all  been  elsewhere.  The  Printemps, 
whose  proprietor  went  shockingly  bankrupt  in  sugar 
speculations  a  few  years  ago  is,  with  the  Galeries 
Lafayette,  on  the  Haussman;  the  "Belle  Jardiniere" 
is  down  near  the  river;  the  "Samaritaine"  is  on  the 
Rue  de  Rivoli,  where  that  street  loses  its  character 
of  neighbor  to  the  Tuileries  and  takes  on  the  color 
of  the  nearby  vegetable  markets. 

Possibly,  as  was  said,  the  character  of  that  Cafe 
de  la  Paix  corner  may  acquire  a  new  charm;  but 
where  are  we  to  be  while  we  observe  that  charm? 


THE    COURTESAN    OF    CITIES     139 

What  is  to  become  of  that  crowd  of  onlookers  who 
have  for  these  many  decades  filled  those  chairs  and 
sipped  mild  beverages  at  those  little  round-topped 
tables?  Not,  of  course,  that  it  has  been  the  only 
vantage  point  upon  the  grand  boulevards,  but  it  has 
been  the  most  admittedly  popular.  At  Weber's,  on 
the  Rue  Royale;  at  Durand's,  at  the  Grand  Cafe,  at 
the  Riche,  at  Poussets's,  the  Cafe  Viennois — at  all 
the  innumerable  places  up  toward  the  Rue  Mont- 
martre  itself,  there  are  never  vacant  chairs  for  more 
than  a  few  seconds.  There  were  those,  too,  who 
came  to  look  upon  a  sitting  outside  the  Cafe  de  la 
Paix  as  an  advertisement  of  one's  ignorance  of 
Paris,  just  as  there  are  those  who  know  their  Paris 
far  too  well  ever  to  go  near,  in  their  sober  senses, 
any  such  places,  cafes  or  so-called  bars,  as  include  the 
name  American  in  their  title.  Yet,  there  is  no  wis- 
dom without  folly;  whether,  eventually,  in  spite  of 
its  odor  of  the  outlandish  and  the  outmoded,  the 
Cafe  de  la  Paix  became  a  conscious  habit  with  us  or 
not,  it  was  a  place  at  which  to  have  sat. 

It  was  at  night  that  the  spectacle  was  at  its  best. 
Its  charms  were  then  accentuated  by  the  lights,  by 
the  increase  in  mere  leisurely  traffic,  by  the  obvious 
pursuit  of  pleasure.  Within  the  cafes  solid  burgh- 
ers dined  and  played  dominos  interminably;  pretty 
women  were  eating  and  drinking,  reading  the  news- 
papers, one  another's  toilettes  and  the  nature  of  men; 
but  that  was  background;  the  boulevard  itself  was 
the  play.  Men  and  women  afoot,  eager  for  life, 
or  weary  of  it,  but  all  keyed  up,  somehow,  to  a  some- 
times passionate  tension  that  Paris  exercises  allur- 
ingly and  sometimes  brutally;  cabs  and  taxis,  some 


140  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

scurrying  in  the  true  French  recklessness  across  any 
open  spaces  the  street  might  offer,  others  crawling, 
as  the  London  phrase  has  it;  the  fashionably  dressed, 
and  the  fantastically  dressed,  the  rich  and  the  poor. 
The  well-fed  gourmet  on  his  way  to  Voisin's  or  the 
Anglais  might  be  shouldered  by  one  who,  if  not  ac- 
tually an  apache,  looked  so  fit  to  commit  murder  for 
twenty  sous,  that  to  hang  him  on  suspicion  would  be 
a  benefaction.  Strange  gutter  creatures  approached 
the  tables,  spearing,  with  pointed  stick,  cigar  and 
cigarette  butts  as  accurately  as  the  seahawk  diving 
for  a  fish.  The  newspaper  peddlers  of  Paris  are 
themselves  worth  an  entire  chapter.  Custom  seems 
to  prevent  the  same  newsboy  selling  more  than  one 
sort  of  paper.  As  a  result,  we  have  a  procession  of 
weird  creatures  uttering  each  a  strange  cry,  and  each 
seeming  to  carry  never  more  than  half  a  dozen  copies 
of  this  or  that  printed  sheet;  first,  we  are  asked  to 
"demand  La  Brehse,"  which  is  an  effort  in  onoma- 
topeia  to  reproduce  the  strange  nasal  argot  of  these 
hawkers;  then  the  last  edition  of  a  lottery  drawing; 
then  the  "Batrie"  (these  guttermongers  have  an 
aversion  to  the  consonant  "p")»  and  so  on  for  half 
the  night.  The  throng  flows  ceaselessly;  and  those 
who  walk  regard  those  seated  quite  as  closely  as  the 
latter  return  the  attention.  The  burgher  and  his 
wife;  the  student  and  his  sweetheart;  the  night- 
hawks  looking  for  prey — all  these  come  and  go,  go 
and  come. 

Yes,  if  you  sat  there  long  enough,  day  and  dusk, 
you  would  see  most  of  the  people  who  were  worth 
while,  to  say  nothing  of  many  more  whom  it  was  as 
well  not  to  see. 


THE    COURTESAN    OF    CITIES     141 

COSMOPOLITAN  as  this  throng,  passing  that  cor- 
ner, has  been  in  its  time,  it  is  elsewhere,  after  all,  that 
one  has  had,  of  late,  to  look  for  the  most  "rigolo" 
types  of  "all  Paris,"  which  means,  to  some,  all  the 
world.  If  the  Cafe  de  la  Paix  corner  loses  its  old 
character,  then  the  Avenue  du  Bois  remains.  That 
has  been  the  most  famous  of  all  the  thoroughfares 
for  seeing  the  fashion  and  the  frailty,  the  blossom 
and  the  musk,  the  notabilities  and  the  notorious,  of 
Paris.  Through  this  funnel,  every  fine  afternoon  of 
the  season,  the  world  spilled  itself  into  the  Bois;  for 
two  sous,  upon  a  little  metal  chair  at  the  corner,  the 
Etoile  in  view,  as  well  as  the  parklike  lane  to  the  park 
itself,  you  could  watch  the  carriages,  the  cars  and 
the  more  leisurely  saunterers;  here  it  was  not  neces- 
sary even  to  buy  a  drink. 

It  is  this  point  that  the  artists  Sem  and  Roubille 
chose  when  they  portrayed  Paris  as  it  passes  in  their 
most  arresting  exhibition  of  wooden  caricatures. 
This  diorama  was  in  its  time  on  view  in  the  Rue 
Royale,  in  Monte  Carlo  and  in  London. 

In  this  diorama  you  could  watch  uall  Paris,"  as  if 
you  were  standing  at  the  Avenue  Malakoff,  with  the 
Trianon-like  house  of  the  Castellane-Sagan-Gould  es- 
tablishment in  the  background.  Space  does  not  per- 
mit mention  of  all  the  merely  Paris  celebrities  on 
view  in  this  exhibition;  but  some  known  to  Cosmop- 
olis  at  large  cannot  fail  to  interest  even  America. 
Here  went  M.  Martel  of  brandy  fame;  there  Henry 
Labouchere's  son-in-law,  the  Marchese  de  Rudini. 
Literary  celebrities  follow  closely:  George  Feydeau, 
famous  for  his  farces;  Tristan  Bernard,  another 
playwright;  Henri  Bernstein,  whose  plays  and  duels 


1 42  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

England  and  America  know;  and  no  less  than  Ed- 
mond  Rostand  himself,  under  a  gray  Spanish  som- 
brero, walking  with  James  Hazen  Hyde.  Here  is 
Count  Robert  de  Montesquiou ;  and  there  the  satirist, 
Ernest  Lajeunesse.  Presently  come  James  Gordon 
Bennett;  two  of  the  Rothschilds,  Raoul  Gunsbourg 
of  the  Monte  Carlo  Opera ;  Prince  Troubetskoi,  and 
such  internationally  known  artists  as  Boldini,  Forain 
and  Helleu.  The  corseted  figure  of  Boni  de  Castel- 
lane  swings  by,  twirling  a  cane.  Then  come  folk  in 
carriages  or  motors,  ranging  all  the  way  from  Tod 
Sloan  to  the  late  King  Edward.  Artistes  like  Max 
Dearly,  Polaire  and  Otero ;  the  late  king  of  the  Bel- 
gians; celebrities  of  turf  and  finance  and  of  that 
world  wherein  Emilienne  d'Alencon  and  Rita  del 
Erido  are  prominent.  Whether  anything  like  it 
could  be  done  outside  of  Paris,  or,  at  any  rate,  be- 
yond the  confines  of  the  European  continent,  is  a 
question.  The  promenade  is  an  art  distinctly  Paris- 
ian. There  is,  to  be  sure,  an  hour  in  the  season  when 
Bond  Street,  Fifth  Avenue,  Boylston  Street  see  a 
passing-by  of  people  well  worth  seeing;  but  we 
scarcely  ever,  in  Anglo-Saxon  centers,  assemble  such 
widely  diverging  types  of  character. 

All  depends  upon  the  eye  of  the  beholder.  We, 
on  the  American  side,  are  perhaps  still  somewhat 
too  thin-skinned  to  endure  patiently  the  cosmopolitan 
caricaturist's  contemplations.  There  is  always,  be- 
tween a  society  and  its  critics,  a  necessary  collabora- 
tion before  the  really  valuable  effect  is  gained.  It 
is  certainly  an  interesting  speculation  whether  any 
Anglo-Saxon  corner  in  Cosmopolis  would  afford  the 
pencil  of  the  caricaturist  such  opportunities  as  Sem 


THE    COURTESAN    OF    CITIES      143 

and  Roubille  have  taken  advantage  of.  About  that, 
however,  as  about  the  future  of  the  famous  corner 
on  the  boulevard,  only  Time  knows  the  answer. 

IV 

IN    COOKING   STILL    SUPREME 

YET  some  of  the  old  legends  hold,  some  land- 
marks stay.  In  food  for  all  mankind,  as  in  fashions 
for  the  fair,  Paris  still  leads  the  world.  The  years 
have  not  appreciably  changed  that  fact.  Tastes  in 
clothes  and  cutlets  differ,  thank  fate,  or  the  world 
would  be  a  melancholy  monochrome ;  there  be  points 
upon  which  the  American  woman  surpasses  her 
French  sister  in  attaining  to  the  ideal  exterior;  there 
may  be  hardy  beefeaters  who  prefer  the  chop-houses 
of  London  and  New  York  to  the  exquisite  dinners 
of  Paris ;  but  in  the  main  the  fair-minded  gourmet  can 
still  discern  daylight  between  Paris  and  the  rest  of 
the  world;  she  still  leads.  Especially  does  she  shine 
against  the  dismal  dinners  and  the  dreary  dressing 
of  London.  Not  even  the  brilliance  of  a  Coronation 
atoned  for  the  atrocities  that  London  still  insists  on 
forcing  upon  the  unhappy  stranger,  atrocities  of 
fashion  and  cuisine.  London's  rank  as  a  city  in 
which  to  dine  is  still  far  in  the  rear  of  many  other 
great  towns  and  certainly  not  within  hailing  distance 
of  New  York.  It  is  true  that  in  the  last  score  of 
years  London  has  improved;  the  passing  stranger  is 
no  longer  compelled  to  dine  either  from  the  joint  or 
not  at  all,  but  it  is  still  indisputable  that  no  matter 
how  luxurious  may  seem  the  dining-room  into  which 


144  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

he  enters,  he  does  not  really  get  his  money's  worth. 

There  you  have  the  difference  between  dining  in 
Paris  and  in  London.  I  have  gone  haphazard  into 
a  little  brasserie  on  the  Boulevard  Montmartre,  and 
I  have  had  set  before  me,  as  the  regular  fixed  dinner 
of  the  day,  a  meal  that  you  could  not  equal,  for  sheer 
satisfaction  to  the  eye  as  well  as  to  the  stomach,  in 
all  London,  at  four  times  the  price.  No,  for  what 
it  charges,  London  never  gives  a  cosmopolitan  his 
or  her  money's  worth;  so  much  is  certain. 

I  have  compared  notes  with  many  another  vaga- 
bond, and  I  find  no  divergence  from  this  opinion.  If 
you  consider  London,  to  be  concise,  as  a  place  to  dine 
in,  what  do  you  find?  There  are  the  huge  hotels — 
the  Cecil,  the  Savoy,  the  Carlton,  the  Ritz  and  many 
others.  But  it  is  not  into  these  that  the  vagrom  man 
or  woman  is  likely  to  pop  on  the  spur  of  a  hungry 
moment.  It  is  just  on  this  side  that  Paris  remains 
so  supreme ;  let  your  mood  catch  you  on  any  street, 
it  will  be  rarely  that  the  first  decent-seeming  place 
you  enter  does  not  eventually  furnish  you  with  a 
pleasant  repast.  The  places  in  London  where  the 
casual  appetite  may  be  satisfied  include  Prince's  on 
Piccadilly,  the  Royal  on  Regent  Street,  Romano's 
in  the  Strand,  the  Trocadero  on  Shaftesbury  Avenue, 
Dieudonne's  on  Ryder  Street  and  Scott's  at  the  top 
of  the  Haymarket.  At  Prince's  you  must  engage 
tables  beforehand.  If  you  have  done  that,  you  are 
sure  to  see  a  number  of  persons  of  title  and  millions. 
But  as  to  the  food — well,  a  habitue  of  Martin's  or 
Delmonico's  could  not  possibly  go  into  raptures  over 
it.  The  bill  is  not  calculated  to  appeal  to  the  casual 
and  the  curious  stranger,  however  much  he  or  she 


THE    COURTESAN    OF    CITIES      145 

may  teem  with  solicitude  for  the  stomach.  At  the 
Royal  it  is  about  the  same.  At  the  Trocadero  one 
finds  a  little  more  life  and  sparkle.  The  British  fash- 
ion of  ladies,  who  are  sometimes  ladies  only  by 
lapse,  smoking  after  dinner  may  be  observed  here 
at  every  other  table.  Also,  one  has  the  interest  of 
knowing  that  the  rooms  he  is  sitting  in  are  on  the  site 
of  the  notorious  Argyle  Rooms,  familiar  to  all  who 
have  gone  into  the  history  of  the  supposedly  wicked 
side  of  life  in  great  cities. 

The  method  of  dining  that  obtains  at  the  Troca- 
dero is  typical  of  many  similar  places  in  London. 
In  the  same  room  you  may  be  served  any  of  three 
or  more  different  dinners.  One  is  at  twelve  shillings 
and  sixpense;  one  at  ten  shillings,  another  at  seven 
and  another  at  five.  Now,  about  this  sort  of  thing 
there  is  always  the  uncomfortable  suspicion  that  the 
seven-shilling  dinner,  say,  is  the  remains  of  some 
other  person's  twelve  and  sixpenny  dinner.  The 
courses  are  plenty,  but  they  are  all  equally  heavy. 
The  best  soup  you  get  in  London  is  a  bisque  of 
crayfish.  The  entrees  are  French  in  name,  but  Eng- 
lish in  their  construction.  If  you  are  drinking  wine, 
all  is  well;  England  invariably  has  good,  if  expen- 
sive, clarets,  and  her  champagnes  are  as  good  as 
ours,  and  no  dearer.  But  if  you  should  prefer  to 
have  some  light  beer  served,  as  one  may  always 
have  it  served  in  the  most  splendid  of  New  York's 
dining-rooms,  in  carafe,  you  at  once  come  a  cropper. 
Beer,  you  are  told,  is  only  served  downstairs  in  the 
grillroom.  And  from  this  and  similar  rules  there  is 
no  diverging  for  love  nor  money.  When  you  reach 
the  dessert,  which  all  England  terms  "the  sweets," 


146  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

it  comes  to  you  wheeled  on  a  neat  little  traveling 
waiter.  The  ice,  also,  is  very  fine  to  gaze  upon.  As 
it  approaches  you  on  its  little  carriage  that  is 
wheeled  about  the  room  it  shines  as  with  electric 
light,  quite  in  the  manner  of  the  ices  brought  in  on 
some  German  Atlantic  liners  when  the  captain's  din- 
ner is  on.  Meanwhile,  there  is  a  band  playing,  and 
there  are  bare  shoulders  enough  all  around  to  make 
a  cannibal's  mouth  water;  the  smoke  of  cigarettes 
filters  toward  the  ceiling,  and  the  gold  tips  are  con- 
stantly kissed  by  over-red  lips.  But,  when  the  steep 
bill  comes,  has  the  diner  had  his  money's  worth? 
No !  a  thousand  times  no !  It  is  hard  to  say  defi- 
nitely, this  course  was  badly  cooked,  this  entree  was 
tasteless;  but  the  fact  remains  that  London  food 
rarely  delights  the  palate.  It  may  make  bone  and 
sinew — I  dare  say  it  does — but  it  is  never  seasoned 
properly;  it  lacks  salt  at  all  times;  and  no  matter 
how  elaborate  its  surroundings  may  have  been,  it 
never  by  any  chance  suggests  the  perfect  meal. 

The  safest  thing  for  the  vagrom  man  in  Lon- 
don today  is  still  the  thing  that  was  safest  twenty 
years  ago,  namely,  to  pop  into  the  first  public  house 
he  sees  and  partake  of  the  so-called  ordinary.  He 
will,  at  least,  get  good  beef  and  potatoes,  and  he 
can  always  help  himself  plentifully  to  the  salt.  His 
bill  will  not  necessarily  remind  him  that  he  has  paid 
a  great  deal  for  very  little.  As  to  the  appetite  of 
the  fairer  sex,  well,  there's  a  sad  matter!  If  she  be 
not  omnivorous  in  respect  of  what  the  English  term 
"a  tea,"  which  includes  bread  and  butter  and  various 
sorts  of  cake,  she  will  fare  but  poorly  in  the  largest 


THE    COURTESAN    OF    CITIES     147 

city  in  the  world.  She  will  I  fear,  have  to  put  up 
with  the  dinners  of  Prince's  and  his  lesser  rivals. 
The  Strand,  of  course,  teems  with  places  where  one 
can  eat.  But  to  eat  is  not  to  have  dined! 

There,  exactly,  is  where  London  fails;  you  may 
eat  there,  but  you  can  seldom  dine.  Yet  there  be 
Englishmen  who  will  rave  you  wonderful  things 
about  London  as  a  solace  to  the  gourmet.  A  dear 
fellow  of  my  acquaintance,  for  instance,  a  man  who 
is  very  different  from  the  ordinary  insular  Briton, 
a  man  who  has  consorted  much  with  the  more 
mercurial  spirits  of  England,  such  as  "Johnny" 
Toole,  "Dundreary"  Sothern,  and  their  newer 
peers,  once  gave  me  an  elaborate  list  of  the  places 
in  London  where  one  could  find  what  he  called 
"beautiful  food!"  Dear  fellow!  if  I  cannot  thank 
him  for  all  the  experiences  in  dining  that  he  pre- 
pared for  me,  I  can  still  feel  eminently  grateful  to 
him  for  that  phrase,  "beautiful  food." 

FOR  "beautiful  food"  is  just  what  Paris  does  give 
you,  in  every  sense  of  the  word.  No  matter 
whether  you  are  at  the  Ritz  or  at  any  chance  bras- 
serie on  any  chance  boulevard,  it  is  still  "beautiful 
food."  I  really  think  that  in  all  my  experience  I 
have  only  happened  upon  about  one  positively  bad 
dinner  in  Paris,  no  matter  how  low  the  price  I  was 
paying.  In  the  first  place,  you  are  always  sure  of 
good,  crisp  bread  and  fresh  butter.  In  London  one 
is  likely  to  encounter  some  most  impenetrable  bread, 
though  the  butter  is  mostly  prime.  Next,  the  linen 
on  a  Parisian  dinner-table  is  a  delight  that  makes 


148  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

for  rapture  in  the  female  breast  and  appetite  in  both 
sexes.  Even  where  there  is  only  sand  on  the  floor, 
there  is  sure  to  be  spotless  linen  on  the  table. 

I  have  gone  into  little  holes-in-the-wall  on  the 
Boulevard  Montmartre,  where  white  sand  was  on 
the  floor,  and  where  cheaply  but  artistically  garbed 
grisettes  wandered  in  and  out,  and  my  dinner,  at  the 
price  of  about  sixty  cents,  or  half  a  crown,  with  red 
wine  of  the  country  included,  has  been  one  that  for 
real  satisfaction  all  London  could  not  equal.  For 
this  price  one  has  the  choice  either  of  a  good  soup, 
a  soup  that  has  taste  to  it,  and  is  not,  like  most  Eng- 
lish soups,  a  mere  unsalted  liquid;  or,  if  you  decline 
soup,  the  variety  of  fresh  radishes,  or  salad  or  spicy 
sausage,  or  anchovies,  or  sardines,  that  are  known 
as,  hors  d'oeuvres;  then  you  may  have  two  meat 
courses,  each  of  which  is  sure  to  be  perfectly  cooked; 
next  comes  a  vegetable,  served  as  a  separate  course. 
To  pass  these  French  vegetables,  cooked  as  Paris 
cooks  them,  without  further  comment,  were  to  be 
unjust.  Such  green  peas,  and  such  string  beans, 
such  asparagus,  as  you  may  get  in  these  insignificant, 
cheap  little  dinners!  Why,  not  the  most  priceless 
dinner  in  England  gives  you  anything  that  so  satis- 
fies one's  notion  of  food  as  it  should  be  as  do  these 
little  dishes  of  vegetables  at  any  little  brasserie  in 
Paris. 

And  no  matter  how  queer  and  how  cheap  your 
little  Parisian  brasserie  may  seem,  you  are  sure  to 
find  Americans  not  far  off.  These  Americans,  more- 
over, are  not  by  any  means  slumming;  they  are  sim- 
ply on  the  hunt  for  "beautiful  food."  Concerning 
the  delights  of  the  Ritz,  of  Voisin,  of  Paillard  and 


THE   COURTESAN   OF   CITIES     149 

of  the  Anglais,  there  are  plenty  who  will  tell  you 
wonderful  things.  But  about  certain  other  sides  of 
dining  in  Paris  there  has  not  been  such  a  plethora 
of  fact  and  fiction.  If  you  were  to  ask  me  how  best 
to  live  in  Paris,  gastronomically  considered,  with- 
out absolutely  advertising  the  fact  that  you  are  a 
millionaire,  I  should  advise  one  visit  to  each  of  the 
famous  places  I  have  mentioned,  and  thereafter  a 
browsing  into  less  expensive  fields. 

You  must  go,  of  course,  to  Marguery's,  far  up  the 
boulevard,  not  far  from  the  Porte  Martin.  Not  to 
have  eaten  Sole  a  la  Marguery  is  not  to  have  known 
dining  in  Paris.  You  are  sure  to  have  pleasant 
memories  of  Marguery's,  no  matter  what  may  be 
the  size  of  your  bill.  The  heart  of  Paris  is  hum- 
ming a  couple  of  miles  away,  but  Sole  a  la  Marguery 
brings  all  devotees  of  "beautiful  food"  together. 
Another  reason  why  one  went  to  Marguery's  in  the 
old  days  was  that  the  venerable  proprietor  was  one 
of  the  handsomest  men  in  Paris.  No  matter  how 
low  an  opinion  your  fair  friends  might  have  formed 
of  the  Parisian  men  in  general,  that  white-haired, 
soldierly  figure  at  Marguery's  atoned  for  a  great 
deal. 

Passing  from  Marguery's  to  the  neighborhood  of 
the  Madeleine,  there  is  a  large  choice  of  good  places. 
Durand's  is  comparatively  dear,  and  overinfested 
with  the  type  of  American  who  wishes  to  be  seen 
rather  than  to  be  an  artist  in  dining.  Moreover,  at 
Durand's,  as  at  most  of  the  places  of  this  type,  one 
is  invariably  enticed  into  dining  in  a  cabinet,  or 
private  room;  this  is  always  twice  as  dear,  and  there 
is  really  nothing  gained.  Except  as  an  aid  to  the 


150  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

average  French  farce — or  the  average  French  af- 
fair of  the  heart  (which  also  is  but  another  sort  of 
farce) — the  cabinet  particulier  has  no  real  reason 
for  existence.  The  place  where  you  really  can  dine 
delightfully  in  this  district  is  Lucas'.  You  are  in 
sight  of  the  Madeleine;  you  can,  if  the  evening  per- 
mit, have  the  cloth  laid  on  one  of  the  tables  outdoors, 
and  you  will  be  most  pleasantly  served.  You  will 
have  to  order  from  the  card;  but  you  will  hardly 
regret  this.  The  life  of  the  boulevard  flows  con- 
stantly into  the  Rue  Royale  before  you,  and,  as 
the  day  darkens  and  the  lights  begin  to  glimmer, 
the  spectacle  constantly  takes  on  new  attractions. 
Fox  terriers  come  wandering  out  of  dark  doorways, 
followed  by  the  concierges  whose  pets  they  are.  Lit- 
tle milliners  trot  homeward  quickly;  devotees  of  an- 
other profession  pass  at  a  more  indolent  gait. 
Meanwhile,  Lucas'  eagle-eyed  head  waiter  is  seeing 
that  the  entree  is  just  right,  the  little  peas — oh,  those 
little  peas  chez  Lucas! — just  of  the  right  savor,  and 
that,  for  these  American  tastes,  there  are  fans  and 
also  plenty  of  ice  in  the  glasses. 

Ah,  yes!  thank  fate,  in  Paris,  as  in  Berlin,  one 
can  find  plenty  of  that  article  so  strange,  so  unknown 
in  London — ice.  Also  water.  A  cup  of  coffee  is 
never  served  in  Berlin  without  a  glass  of  water;  in 
Paris  it  is  more  likely  to  be  cognac  than  water;  but 
in  London  the  fluid  water  is  quite  unknown  to  the 
average  waiter.  At  Lucas',  if  one  does  not  have 
more  than  a  little  chicken,  some  fresh  peas,  a  salad 
and  some  coffee,  he  is  sure  to  depart  beautifully  con- 
scious of  having  assisted  at  an  artistic  moment.  One 
point  about  coffee  and  brandy  that  the  stranger  must 


THE    COURTESAN    OF    CITIES      151 

take  note  of  in  Paris  is  that  the  ordinary  cognac 
always  served  with  coffee  is  a  cheap  type  of  brandy, 
and  that  if  he  wishes — later  in  the  evening,  per- 
haps— to  take  a  little  cognac  by  itself,  he  must  not 
ask  for  cognac,  but  for  fine  champagne.  He  usually 
dines  in  one  place,  takes  his  coffee  somewhere  else, 
and  perhaps  his  final  liqueur  still  somewhere  else. 

IF  I  have  singled  out  Lucas'  as  a  place  most  ex- 
cellent for  those  who  wish,  at  moderate  prices,  to 
dine  from  the  card,  the  places  where  one  may  dine 
at  a  fixed  price  are  countless.  Any  insignificant  little 
brasserie  on  the  boulevard  Montmartre  will  do. 

On  the  Place  Clichy  one  evening  when  the  famous 
Fete  de  Neuilly,  at  which  all  fashionable  Paris  goes 
slumming  and  playing  at  being  child  again,  had  just 
been  moved  over  to  Montmartre,  I  dined  quite 
pleasantly  at  Le  Rat  Mort.  The  soup  was  excellent, 
despite  the  shudder  the  gentler  members  of  our 
party  could  not  suppress  when  they  thought  of  what 
the  restaurant's  name  implied.  From  the  windows 
of  the  Rat  Mort  we  gazed  upon  a  trio  of  brilliant 
and  noisy  carrousels,  all  whirling  madly  to  the  mad- 
dest of  tunes.  Gay  beauties  came  wandering  down 
from  the  farthest  heights  of  Montmartre — models 
and  such  as  were  by  no  means  models — and  seated 
themselves,  with  elaborate  exposition  of  lace  and 
frill,  upon  the  horses  of  the  merry-go-rounds.  On 
one  of  these  merry-go-rounds  the  steeds  were  pigs, 
that  heaved  up  and  down  like  ships  at  sea,  with  the 
gay  Parisiennes  bounding  provokingly  and  enticingly 
up  and  down,  all  smiles  and  shouts  and  hosiery. 
What,  in  all  the  solemn,  smoky,  stolid  business  of 


i5 2  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

London  dining,  can  equal  a  sixty-cent  dinner  at  the 
Dead  Rat,  or  the  Broken  Pipe,  or  many  another 
curious  little  place  in  Paris?  Not  even  to  New 
York  have  we  been  able  to  export  the  happy  gaiety 
of  these  uncouth  little  holes;  with  us  there  comes 
always  too  great  an  intrusion  of  the  tough  element. 
The  Parisians  can  be  poor  and  still  gay,  exuberant 
and  still  decent.  They  can  drink  oceans  of  their 
cheap  red  wine  without  wishing  to  burn  up  the  house 
or  fight  the  neighbors.  At  the  worst,  they  cry  aloud 
for  a  political  revolution  of  some  sort;  but  the 
method  is  rarely  a  personal  one. 

Yes,  Paris  is  still  the  home  of  the  most  "beautiful 
food"  in  the  world.  Beautiful  in  every  sense  of  the 
word;  the  dining-rooms,  the  diners  as  well  as  the 
dinner,  all  are  equally  pleasing  to  one's  sense  of 
beauty.  What  is  true  of  Paris  itself  is  true  of  the 
spots  near  by.  Than  Paris-Bellevue,  for  example, 
there  is  nothing  more  pleasant  conceivable.  In  the 
distance  twinkles  Paris  with  its  million  points  of 
light;  dark  below  you  flows  the  Seine;  you  can  trace 
St.  Cloud  and  Verseilles  shimmering  hazily.  The 
food  before  you  promises  delight;  everything  here, 
as  generally  in  Paris,  caters  not  so  much  to  appetite 
as  to  the  art  of  dining.  Which,  assuredly,  is  an  art 
like  any  other. 

An  art  of  which  Paris  remains  past  mistress. 

WHERE,  in  the  printed  record,  or  in  the  facts  to 
go  upon  that  record,  have  we  the  equivalent,  on  this 
side  of  the  Atlantic,  to  such  pleasures  of  the  table? 
How  small  is  the  shelf  in  that  sort  here !  Francis 
Saltus  wrote  stories  and  verses  about  things  to  eat 


THE    COURTESAN    OF    CITIES      153 

and  drink;  and  Jerome  Hart  once  devoted  a  chapter 
to  the  cooking  in  San  Francisco  and  New  Orleans, 
and  to  the  abominations  current  in  the  vast  inns 
along  our  Florida  coasts;  but  in  the  main,  in  fiction, 
or  in  descriptive  chronicling,  the  detail  of  meat  and 
drink  is  sadly  scamped  by  us.  We  travel  abroad  in 
our  thousands,  and  we  return  full  of  wonderful 
tales  of  what  other  lands  contrive  to  do  to  our  tastes 
and  our  stomachs;  but  here  at  home — well,  I  need 
only  to  recall  certain  remarks  of  M.  Hugues  Le 
Roux  in  French  and  Freiherr  von  Wolzogen  in  Ger- 
man, who  declared  that  the  prevailing  note  of  our 
cuisine  was  Cold  Storage.  Ice,  they  wailed,  took  the 
savor  out  of  our  food,  our  fruit,  our  wines — to  say 
nothing  of  our  amatory  relations. 

Truly,  the  path  of  the  proper  gourmet  in  America 
is  but  infrequently  beset  with  rewards.  Now  and 
again,  in  this  or  that  nook,  he  finds  a  haven  of  refuge 
for  his  digestion,  for  his  palate — for  such  pleasures 
of  the  table,  in  short,  as  appeal  to  the  eye,  to  the 
taste  and  to  the  memory — but  how  long  do  those 
havens  survive  the  money  fever?  The  ancient  trav- 
elers like  nothing  much  better  than  to  lament  the 
passing  of  this  or  that  famous  eating-place  in  Paris; 
but  even  the  modern  wanderer  within  our  own  bor- 
ders has  to  take  note  of  the  speed  with  which  first 
too  much  popularity  and  then  inevitable  decline  over- 
take the  places  that  try  to  cater  to  the  art  of  dining 
rather  than  merely  to  appetite. 

Yes,  it  is  vastly  unprofitable  to  contrast  the  field 
over  which  Lieutenant-Colonel  Newnham-Davis 
roamed  before  giving  us  his  "Gourmet's  Guide  to 
Europe"  and  the  field  which  confronts  a  similar  ad- 


154  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

venture  here.  Still,  one  wishes  the  experiment  might 
be  tried  here.  Not  the  sort  of  thing  that  a  James 
Clarence  Harvey  once  did  under  some  "Bohemian" 
title  of  other;  not  merely  an  advertisement  of  con- 
spicuous feeding-places  for  the  conspicuous  members 
of  our  half-world  of  vanity;  but  a  conscientious,  un- 
biased record  of  what  experiences  are  possible  in 
American  towns  to  the  true  disciple  of  Brillat- 
Savarin,  or  even  to  the  person  who  is  ordinarily 
careful  of  his  interior  arrangements. 

If  the  thing  is  ever  to  be  done,  let  us  hope  that  it 
will  be  Colonel  Newnham-Davis  who  will  do  it. 
He  has  proved  himself  the  first  of  Anglo-Saxon 
authorities  in  these  matters;  his  little  book  is  a 
model;  and  such  of  us  as  have  been  in  the  habit  of 
proclaiming  aloud  the  merits  of  terrapin,  of  planked 
shad,  of  chicken  Maryland,  of  'possum  and  sweet 
potatoes,  of  pompano  and  of  many  other  purely 
American  specialties,  should  unite  in  inviting  this 
eminent  authority  over  here  for  purposes  of  com- 
piling a  "Gourmet's  Guide  to  America."  He  might, 
it  is  true,  consider  us  somewhat  arrogant  in  our  as- 
sumption of  title  to  an  entire  Continent;  he  might, 
remembering  his  Parisian  hours,  remind  us  that 
there  are  Americans  of  the  South,  as  well  as  of  the 
northern  half;  but  all  that  would  merely  extend  the 
scope  of  his  enterprise,  from  our  peculiar  kitchen — 
hardly  more  definable  than  the  American  type  of 
citizen,  so  compound  is  it  of  many  alien  qualities — 
to  the  various  Latin  kitchens  of  South  America  and 
Mexico. 

THAT  Colonel  Newnham-Davis  agrees  with  the 


THE    COURTESAN    OF    CITIES     155 

pages  of  mine  you  have  just  been  reading  is  made 
clear  by  the  fact  that  France  occupies  nearly  a  third 
of  his  book;  and  the  first  fifty  pages  are  devoted 
to  Paris  alone.  No  matter  how  devoted  you  are  to 
the  theory  that  when  you  die  you  will  go  to  Paris, 
if  you  read  his  little  book  carefully,  you  will  be  as- 
tonished to  discover  what  you  do  not  know.  The 
Parisian  resorts  patronized  by  the  well-to-do  cos- 
mopolitans are  contrasted  against  those  frequented 
by  the  Parisian  burghers  themselves,  and  the  places 
on  the  Left  Bank  are  detailed  as  thoroughly  as  the 
others.  Even  the  summer  places,  partly  in  the  open 
air,  have  several  pages  to  themselves.  And  so  it  is 
throughout  the  book.  From  Spain  to  Petersburg, 
and  from  Sicily  to  Ostend,  our  author  points  the 
gastronomic  way. 

No  mere  amateur  in  "beautiful  food"  may  at- 
tempt to  improve  on  the  fine  catholicity  displayed 
by  Colonel  Davis,  yet  there  are  a  few  places  not 
mentioned  by  him  which  seem  to  me  worth  mention. 
In  Berlin,  for  instance,  in  the  list  of  those  places 
which,  as  the  book  says,  "lovers  of  good  wines 
should  not  miss,"  should  be  included  an  old-fashioned 
place,  formerly  on  the  Potsdamer  Strasse,  and  now 
near  by,  called  Fredericks.  In  the  old  days  it  was 
frequented  by  ruddy-faced  ancients  in  uniform  whose 
stripes  and  epaulets  told  the  tale  of  their  rank  to 
those  cognizant.  Again  in  Tuscany,  any  rustic 
kitchen  will  supply  an  omelet  con  pane  that  deserves 
memory.  In  Sorrento,  the  restaurant  of  the  Vit- 
toria  deserves  rank  with  the  best  in  southern  Italy; 
and  the  luncheon  in  the  Vesuve,  in  Naples,  is  so  good 
as  to  attract  almost  as  m^.nv  outsiders  as  the  view 


156  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

from  Bertolini's.  In  the  matter  of  coffee,  one  of 
the  best  cups  of  it  to  be  found  outside  of  Vienna — 
and  don't  we  all  know  how  bad  coffee  can  be  in 
Europe! — is  in  the  Hotel  Imperial,  in  Trent,  the 
proprietor  of  which  happens  to  be  a  connoisseur  of 
the  berry  from  Bogota. 

But,  when  all  is  said  and  done,  it  is  always  to 
Paris  we  return  when  we  feel  that  we  would  dine 
as  artists  and  as  amateurs  of  art.  Paris  still  reigns 
supreme  in  cooking  and  cocottes. 

COMES  the  moment  for  good-bye  to  Paris,  to  that 
dear  city  of  delight  which,  with  its  legends,  its  pano- 
rama, its  cooks  and  its  cocottes,  held  us  so  long. 
Paris,  with  its  myriad  enchantments,  and  its  daily 
ruined  dreams.  Paris,  with  its  arts  and  airs;  its 
tawdriness  and  dirt.  Whether  still  enchanted,  or 
grimly  disillusioned,  we  must  be  gone;  work  calls; 
work  and  brute  matter  are  out  yonder,  somewhere 
beyond  the  fortifications ;  we  must  not  loll  forever  on 
the  Venusberg  beside  the  Seine.  The  world,  ugly 
and  terrible,  calls.  Somewhere  men  labor,  and 
grind,  and  sweat. 

And  so — good-bye  to  Paris.  Smiling,  she  waves 
at  us;  she  is  immortal,  and  the  sons  of  men  return 
to  her  through  all  the  centuries.  She  smiles  good- 
bye, knowing  too  well  it  means  "Until  we  meet 
again!" 


CHAPTER    SEVEN 

BERLIN,    NEWEST    OF    GREAT    CITIES 

IF  the  reader  has  not  observed  it,  let  me  em- 
phasize that  this  chronicle  of  mine  follows 
no  logical  routine  of  travel.  Whim  is  the 
only  guide.  To  go,  for  instance,  from 
Munich  to  the  Rhine-valley,  thence  to  Paris,  and 
thence  to  Berlin,  bound  eventually  for  London,  would 
scarcely  be  the  method  of  persons  wishing  to  "do 
Europe'"  in  a  given  space  of  time.  But  to  such  per- 
sons I  have  nothing  to  say.  As  whim  takes  me  over 
the  paths  of  memory,  so  I  stray  leisurely,  up  this  or 
that  by-way.  Similarities  are  no  oftener  my  lure 
than  violent  contrasts.  Comparison  is  one  of  the 
chief  charms  of  life  and  travel.  What  superficially 
seems  unreasoning  whim  is  often  rooted  in  most 
logical  procedure.  If,  then,  I  ask  you,  leaving  Paris 
where  men  perpetually  seek  pleasure,  art  and  cook- 
ing, to  pass  onward  to  Berlin,  the  logic  in  my  whim 
should  be  obvious.  Berlin  is  the  newest  entrant  in 
the  circle  of  the  world's  great  cities;  her  challenge 
is  the  boldest  in  the  arena  of  Cosmopolis.  Her  pur- 
suits, too,  let  us  examine;  her  pursuit  of  culture,  of 
pleasure,  and  of  cooking.  And,  while  the  taste  of 
Paris  cooking  is  not  yet  faded  from  us,  let  us  make 
a  little  inquiry  into  a  typical  cuisine  as  a  beginning 
from  which  to  consider  Berlin  at  large. 

157 


158  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 


FOOD    FOB   THE   MILLION 

IT  is  in  Berlin  that  the  American  metropolitan 
air  is  most  closely  paralleled.  Not  in  London,  not  in 
Vienna,  not  in  Paris;  not  even  in  Munich;  but  in 
Berlin.  The  look  of  modernity;  the  speed  of  build- 
ing; the  traffic  by  day  and  night,  all  wear  an  air  of 
home  to  a  citizen  of  the  Western  continent.  Indeed, 
the  amateur  of  statistics  may  be  surprised  to  find  that 
the  growth  of  Berlin  since  '71  has  made  it  the  marvel 
among  modern  towns.  It  was  in  that  town  that 
Bernhard  Kempinski  became  one  of  the  greatest 
restaurateurs  of  the  world.  Indeed,  we  may  use  his 
career,  just  closed,  as  a  measuring  stick  for  Berlin's 
growth  into  greatness. 

In  London  and  in  New  York  we  are  inclined  to 
attach  notoriety  to  the  names  of  establishments  that 
charge  tremendous  prices  rather  than  to  those  that 
best  solve  the  problem  of  catering  to  the  great  mid- 
dle class.  We  have  too  empty  a  space  between  the 
exclusive  luxury  of  the  millionaire  and  the  dyspeptic 
democracy  of  Child's.  Until  a  still  recent,  imperti- 
nent attempt  to  foist  upon  New  York  an  Alpine  scale 
of  prices  beyond  anything  ever  tried  there,  one  had 
not  thought  there  was  any  limit  to  the  absurd  prices 
New  Yorkers  were  willing  to  pay;  but  the  quick 
failure  of  the  Cafe  le  1'Opera  showed  that  there  is, 
even  in  the  most  brazenly  spendthrift  town  in  Amer- 
ica, a  dead-line.  It  was  Kempinski's  triumph  that 
he  gave  the  world,  in  his  place  on  the  Leipziger- 
strasse,  close  to  the  corner  of  the  Friedrichstrasse, 


BERLIN,    NEWEST    OF    CITIES      159 

in  Berlin,  about  as  good  food  as  you  could  get  any- 
where in  the  world  at  prices  within  the  reach  of  all. 
All  this,  too,  upon  the  American  principle  of  quick 
service. 

It  is  the  one  great  count  against  our  American 
cuisine,  from  the  European  point  of  view,  that  our 
love  of  haste  spoils  the  best  dishes.  We  do  not,  as 
they  tell  us  we  should,  order  the  day  before  and  give 
the  chef  a  chance  to  get  the  best  from  his  viands,  his 
condiments  and  his  skill ;  we  sit  down,  we  order,  and 
we  expect  to  be  fed  at  once.  Even  with  those  same 
handicaps,  then,  Kempinski  accomplished  wonders. 
It  is  true  the  Berliner  is  rather  a  great  than  a  delicate 
trencherman ;  he  likes  quantity,  and  music  and  gayety. 
Kempinski  gave  them  all  of  that,  and  excellent  wine 
besides.  The  quantity  of  Sekt  consumed  in  Kempin- 
ski's  must  have  reached  an  enormous  total  annually. 
Even  the  most  limelight-loving  "wine-opener"  in  any 
American  city  would  have  opened  eyes  to  note  the 
matter-of-fact  way  in  which  the  Kempinski  patrons 
consumed  the  domestic  combination  of  grape  and 
carbonic  acid  gas.  Not  noisily,  as  if  for  an  event; 
but  simply  as  something  without  which  no  dinner  at 
Kempinski's  was  complete. 

Kempinski's  fame  grew  with  the  fame  of  Berlin. 
It  was  a  bourgeois  fame;  an  Englishman  would  be 
likely  to  think  it  somewhat  noisily  German;  a 
Frenchman  might  turn  up  his  nose  at  the  cuisine; 
but  an  American  was  pretty  sure  to  think  of  places 
a  little  like  it  in  his  home  town.  Solid  citizens  testi- 
fied the  solid  fare;  family  parties  proved  the  festive 
respectability  of  the  place.  There  were,  as  Berlin 
grew,  many  other  places,  and  many  finer  places; 


160  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

but  unless  you  had  dined  or  supped  once  at  Kempin- 
ski's,  you  had  not  seen  Berlin.  There  was  even  a 
music  hall  song,  dating  from  the  Ueberbrettl'  pe- 
riod of  the  late  nineties,  called  "Bei  Kempinski." 
One  could  gather  an  entire  volume  of  caricatures 
and  of  stories  in  which  the  name  was  made  a  sort 
of  modern  classic. 

Kempinski  was  an  essential  part  of  that  great 
modern  metropolis  that  has  been  somewhat  slowly 
dawning  upon  Americans.  One  foresees  the  time 
when  the  great  trend  will  be  toward  Berlin  rather 
than  Paris;  it  is  certain  that  each  year  sees  a  great 
increase  of  visitors  to  the  German  capital. 

IT  was  all  vastly  different  in  the  Berlin  of  twenty 
years  ago.  An  American  visitor  was  rare.  Almost 
the  only  American  article  was  the  dentist;  even  then 
it  was  considered  both  wise  and  fashionable  to  have 
an  American  dentist.  One  had  none  too  many  places 
in  which  to  dine  if,  for  exmaple,  one  wished  to 
see  officers  in  uniform.  The  German  tongue  has  a 
phrase  that  marks  a  restaurant  as  "fit  for  officers" ; 
if  it  was  so  "fit,"  you  need  ask  nothing  farther. 
One  establishment  which  was  "offiziersfaehig"  even 
in  those  old  days,  which  has  seen  all  the  changes, 
all  the  growth  of  splendor  and  luxury,  and  gayety 
and  gallicism  making  up  the  Berlin  of  today,  is 
Frederich's,  already  mentioned  at  end  of  the  pre- 
vious chapter.  Until  it  moved,  the  other  day,  into 
a  nearby  side  street,  it  was  for  years  a  pleasant 
landmark  on  the  Potsdamerstrasse.  Officers  of 
the  General  Staff  were  ever  wont  to  patronize  it, 
and  the  late  Adolf  Menzel,  as  Maximilian  Harden 


BERLIN,    NEWEST    OF    CITIES      161 

has  reminded  us,  frequented  it  habitually.  Even 
today,  while  it  may  not  rival  the  conspicuous  or 
magnificent  establishments  of  this  present  era  of  ex- 
travagance, it  still  gives  for  little  money,  in  quiet 
and  comfort,  one  of  the  best  dinners  the  ordinary 
person  may  desire. 

Before  our  day  of  modern  beer-palaces,  you  could 
name  Berlin's  most  popular  eating-places  quickly 
enough.  There  were  swagger  establishments,  like 
Dressel's,  on  the  Linden;  you  took  your  coffee  of  an 
afternoon  at  the  Cafe  Bauer,  or  the  Kraenzler  op- 
posite, or  the  Victoria — all  on  different  corners  of 
the  Linden  and  the  Friedrich — and  you  went  in  the 
evening  to  hear  the  regimental  music  or  the  Italian 
opera  at  Kroll's.  In  those  years  all  the  Mary  Gar- 
dens,  the  Cavalieris,  and  Tetrazzinis  of  the  time 
sang,  sooner  or  later,  at  Kroll's.  It  was  a  private, 
a  cozy,  establishment.  Like  Kempinski's,  it  was 
another  way  of  spelling  Berlin.  Most  of  it  just  a 
garden  outdoors,  with  tables  and  chairs;  the  indoor 
opera-house  was  small  and  intimate.  To-day  it  is 
an  annex  to  the  Royal  Opera-house,  and  under  the 
imperial  dominance;  yet  it  does  not  seem  to  mean  as 
much  as  once  it  did.  In  those  years  when  it  flamed 
with  uniforms  and  with  the  amazingly  ugly  gowns  of 
the  blonde  maidens  of  Berlin  it  was  an  essential  part 
of  that  essentially  provincial  life.  That  life  spelt 
Kroll's,  and  Kempinski's,  and  hearing  Henrich 
Boetel  crack  his  whip  and  his  non-existent  voice  as 
the  Postillion  of  Longjumeau  in  the  theater  on  the 
Belle-Alliancesstrasse.  It  meant  illuminations,  or 
Lortzing's  "Czar  und  Zimmermann"  at  the  old 
Flora.  It  meant  the  first  German  emperor.  .  .  , 


1 62  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

It  was  from  a  window  of  an  uncle's  house  on  the 
Belle-Alliancestrasse  that  the  writer  saw  the  three 
men  who  in  our  time  have  been  German  emperors, 
leading  each  his  regiment;  William,  his  son  Frederick 
William,  and  the  present  ruler.  All  three  together 
on  the  same  day. 

In  those  days  the  shopkeeper  of  Berlin  was  the 
rudest  in  the  world;  he  is  but  little  better  to-day. 
Politeness  in  a  Berlin  shop  meant  that  the  proprietor 
was  from  Vienna.  Shrewd  shoppers  liked  to  pene- 
trate over  beyond  the  royal  stables  and  seek  bar- 
gains in  the  old  town ;  to-day  the  old  town,  the  whole 
district  around  City  Hall,  is  as  modern  as  anything 
else  in  Berlin.  Neither  Tietz  nor  Wertheim's  nor 
the  Western  Warehouse  existed  then.  The  Berlin 
department  store  of  to-day  leaves  little  to  be  desired 
even  by  the  most  devoted  victim  of  the  American 
"meet-me-at-the-fountain"  habit  of  spending  the  day. 
The  street  urchins  of  Berlin  used  to  yell  "Oder 
Kaehne!"  whenever  they  saw  American  footwear 
approaching;  their  quick  wit  soon  found  the  com- 
parison to  those  specially  broad-beamed  barger 
that  ply  the  Oder  and  its  canals.  In  those  days  the 
German  officer  was  paramount.  To  the  officer  the 
outer  world  in  mufti  was  simply  non-existent;  if  you 
were  in  civil  clothes  he  simply  did  not  see  you.  The 
characteristic  jest  of  the  period  summed  up  the  Ger- 
man social  situation  in  its  entirety;  an  officer,  enter- 
ing an  outdoor  resort  which  is  simply  overflowing 
with  a  mass  of  people,  but  all  in  mufti,  screws  his 
monocle  more  tightly  in  his  eye,  surveys  the  scene 
from  on  high,  mutters  "Not  a  soul  in  the  place,"  and 
goes  disgustedly  away.  Something  of  a  contrast, 


BERLIN,    NEWEST   OF    CITIES     163 

you  see,  to  the  American  attitude,  occasionally  ex- 
pressed in  an  expulsion  from  places  of  public  resort 
of  United  States  sailors  or  soldiers  in  uniform.  To- 
day the  officer  is  not  so  paramount,  and  it  may  be  that 
the  American  refusal  to  take  him  at  the  official  Ger- 
man valuation  has  had  as  much  as  anything  else  to 
do  with  that. 

EVEN  in  those  early  days  the  Column  of  Victory 
was  subject  for  the  Berliner's  jibes.  The  only 
maiden  in  Berlin,  so  went  his  joke,  udie  kein  Ver- 
haeltniss  hat"  was  the  one  at  top  of  that  column. 
So  soon  began  the  Gallic  tendency  of  Berlin  wit. 
To-day  Berlin  is  more  Gallic,  in  its  wit  and  sketch, 
than  Paris  itself.  Berlin  makes  fun  of  its  ruler's 
taste  in  art;  it  derides  the  row  of  pallid  ghosts  in 
marble  called  the  Avenue  of  Victory,  supposed  to 
represent  the  Hohenzollerns  and  their  ancestors; 
it  derides  the  fountain  showing  Roland  Von  Berlin; 
it  derides  everything.  Especially  the  Berlin  cabman; 
he  will  just  as  soon  slang  you  as  take  your  money, 
and  his  is  a  wit  that  cuts  deep. 

It  was  a  city  of  magnificent  mistakes  in  marble  that 
the  restaurateur,  Kempinski,  knew  in  his  later  days. 
They  were  plastered  all  over  the  town,  from  the  old 
castle,  to  the  Brandenburger-Thor,  and  throughout 
the  Thiergarten.  People  used  to  dine  as  far  away 
as  the  Zoological  Garden  just  to  get  away  from 
them;  besides,  the  music  there  was  always  good,  and 
the  provincial  world  of  Berlin  liked  to  stroll  up  and 
down  there  and  be  commented  on.  White  marble 
is  a  passion  with  modern  Berlin.  Even  the  most 
material  apartment  houses  manage  to  look  white; 


1 64  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

one  wonders  how  they  keep  so  clean.  In  clean  houses, 
clean  streets,  Berlin  can  teach  the  rest  of  the  world. 
In  much  else  it  leads;  in  urban  postal  facilities,  espe- 
cially of  the  pneumatic  tube  system;  in  electric  tram- 
ways; in  police  paternalism,  and  much  else.  To  feel 
that  paternalism  you  must  live,  rather  than  visit, 
there;  you  may  rebel  at  first;  but  it  all  works  for  the 
protection  of  the  individual  after  all. 

American  arrogance  or  indifference  has  beaten 
down  much  of  the  old  provincialism  that  clung  to 
Berlin.  Like  every  other  town  in  Germany,  Berlin 
had  a  Civic  Association  for  the  Welfare  of  Strang- 
ers, which,  like  the  village  improvement  societies  of 
New  England,  has  value  chiefly  as  it  improves  the 
villagers  themselves.  For,  having  Kempinski's,  hav- 
ing the  pictures  of  Arnold  Boecklin,  having  innumer- 
able riches  material  and  artistic,  the  Berliners  long 
remained  the  utterest  villagers  in  Europe.  Yet  to- 
day the  town  is  like  Chicago,  like  New  York,  or  like 
Boston,  rather  than  like  any  other  town  in  Europe. 

Especially  it  is  like  Boston  in  its  pursuit  of  culture. 
Suppose  we  consider  that  a  little. 

II 

THE    PURSUIT   OF    CULTURE 

To  the  question:  Where  is  Culture?  a  hundred 
towns  cry  "Here!"  Yet  the  world  sees  daily  mil- 
lions of  people  struggling,  crushing,  hurrying,  breath- 
less in  pursuit  of — what?  Culture?  How  explain 
that  paradox?  Boston  has  culture;  Berlin  has  it; 
Athens  had  it;  and  so  on  down  the  endless  list;  and 


BERLIN,    NEWEST    OF    CITIES      165 

yet  a  vast  human  mob  pants  breathlessly  in  search 
of  it! 

Grim  determination  on  their  faces,  they  brave 
bankruptcies,  ocean  journeys,  privations,  so  they  may 
follow  that  will-o'-the-wisp  culture.  Let  us  salute 
them,  heroic,  unreasonable,  futile  as  they  are;  they 
represent  the  dreamers,  the  idealists  of  the  world, 
however  practically,  however  pathetically,  however 
ridiculously  they  engage  in  their  chase.  Life,  lib- 
erty and  the  pursuit  of  culture,  so  do  they  read  the 
articles  of  their  life's  creed. 

There  is  not  a  tiny  American  hamlet  that  has  not 
its  worshipers  at  the  shrine  of  culture.  They  call 
it  by  its  name  familiarly,  not  knowing  that  in  so  do- 
ing they  offend  it;  it  refuses  to  obey  orders.  Yet 
they  put  up  a  stern  chase,  across  continents  and 
oceans.  You  find  these  seekers  in  the  galleries  of 
Florence,  heating  the  cool  corridors  of  the  Pitti  and 
the  Uffizi  by  their  zeal  and  speed;  you  find  them 
amid  ruins  of  Roman  and  Saracen  in  Sicily;  and  you 
find  them  wherever  modernity  seems  seething  most 
hotly.  It  is  a  mad  scramble  to  achieve  culture;  the 
middle-class  mob  of  all  the  world  is  groaning  and 
aching  after  it.  Trying  to  put  finger  on  every  letter 
in  the  culture-alphabet.  Whereas  culture  is  a  butter- 
fly; put  your  finger  on  it  and  it  is  dust,  it  is  gone. 
Culture  remains  intangible,  simply  stuff  for  conver- 
sation. All  newspapers,  all  criticism,  might  cease  to 
exist;  that  would  not  matter  as  much  as  if  people 
ceased  talking  about  art.  The  moment  that  happens, 
art  ceases  to  exist. 

Where  Berlin  and  Boston  touch  is  that  they  both 
insist  upon  compulsory  culture.  Boston  has  never 


1 66  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

had  the  compulsion  to  drink  wine  (Weinzwang — 
impossible  of  direct  translation),  as  have  certain 
Berlin  restaurants;  but  for  decades  it  has  had  the 
compulsion  to  culture.  For  decades  it  has  been  the 
custom  to  suppose  culture  safely  sequestered  in  the 
chill  Bostonian  air.  The  legend  of  Boston  culture 
was  fine  and  full  of  color;  it  is  perpetuated  by  plenty 
of  records  in  description  of  literary  and  artistic 
groups,  colonies  and  enterprises.  Once  the  legend 
was  fact;  the  arts  actually  existed  there;  arts  sub- 
servient neither  to  dollars  nor  to  ladies.  There  were 
men  of  letters;  among  others  Emerson,  refrigerated 
philosopher.  Periodicals  of  artistic  importance  bore 
the  Boston  imprint. 

In  the  history  of  culture  Boston  antedates  Berlin; 
Boston  began  in  the  days  when  they  burnt  witches. 
Even  to-day,  if  you  produce  anything  inexplicably 
beautiful  in  the  arts,  you  are  burnt  at  the  stake  in 
America.  Puritanism,  the  dollar,  and  the  ladies,  to- 
day control  American  culture.  Only  the  ladies  read, 
go  to  the  theater,  and — here  is  the  point  to  be  re- 
peated— talk  about  art.  Talk.  Stuff  to  talk  about, 
the  arts  are  no  more  than  that.  That  is  the  case  in 
Berlin  and  in  Boston. 

To-day,  of  the  culture  legend  there  remains  little 
in  Boston  save  the  compulsion,  enforced  upon  whoso 
would  be  counted  as  an  individual  in  the  fashionable 
and  intellectual  world  of  Boston,  to  believe  in  cul- 
ture as  having  stepped  out  of  the  legend  into  the 
present  day.  You  may  be  able  to  find  evidences  of 
nothing  but  a  curious  disposition  toward  putting  new 
labels  on  old  dogmas — New  Science,  Christian 
Thought,  and  similar  devices — yet  if  you  would  not 


BERLIN,    NEWEST    OF   CITIES     167 

be  ostracized  by  Boston,  you  must  do  your  share  in 
furthering  the  hum  of  culture.  Daily  Boston  strives 
to  bring  dead  culture  to  life  again,  though  many  have 
never  noticed  that  only  the  legend  lives;  they  still 
believe  in  culture  itself.  .  .  .  One  must  be 
armed  in  the  arts;  one  must  be  able  to  name  the 
names.  The  appearance  of  the  thing  must  be  there; 
or  it's  all  off  in  Boston.  .  .  .  Money  does  not 
matter  much;  but  you  simply  must  believe  in  the 
culture  legend. 

IT  is  in  Germany,  in  Berlin,  that  the  pursuit  of  cul- 
ture is,  if  possible,  more  fierce  than  even  in  America. 
Hugo  Muensterberg,  of  Harvard,  for  a  time  fur- 
thering the  Amerika  Institut  in  Berlin,  had  found, 
he  told  me  there  not  long  ago,  a  greater  interest  in 
culture  in  Berlin  than  even  in  Boston.  It  was  a  lit- 
tle discussion  upon  that  matter  which  started  this 
closer  inquiry  into  some  of  the  humor  and  pathos 
of  this  pursuit  in  which  Germany  races  with  Amer- 
ica, and  in  which  all  the  nations  take  part. 

In  our  young  country,  its  own  history  none  too 
long,  its  antiquity  but  fragmentary,  its  heritage  of 
intellect  somewhat  casual,  there  is  plausible  reason 
for  the  blind  worshiping  at  the  culture  shrine.  All 
the  students,  the  teachers,  the  women  who  are  not 
happy,  the  men  who  are  idle,  mingle  to  make  the 
American  crowd  that  annually  crosses  the  ocean  seek- 
ing culture. 

Before  them  looms  in  general  the  huge  continent 
of  the  older  world,  and  some  special  attraction  for 
each  of  them.  These  to  Baireuth;  those  to  Oberam- 
mergau;  here  is  an  exposition  in  Turin;  there  one  in 


1 68  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

Rome,  or  Dresden,  or  Brussels;  one  year  is  a  corona- 
tion in  England,  a  "Rosencavalier"  in  Dresden,  a 
horse  show  here,  an  international  tourist  show  there. 
There  is  always  something  where  items  in  culture 
may  be  gathered. 

Baedeker  serves  as  first  primer;  then  come  the 
advertisements  of  the  steamers  and  railways  and 
hotels,  and  the  Societies  for  Increasing  Traffic,  as 
the  German  phrase  has  it.  From  one  spot  they  speed 
to  another,  sapping  the  honey  from  a  cathedral  here, 
a  picture  show  there,  a  new  opera  here,  a  pantomime 
there. 

There  is  much  that  is  pathetic  in  this  frightful 
scramble.  Life  is  so  bitterly  short,  the  wealth  of 
wonders  in  the  world  so  great!  Not  at  a  hundred 
miles  an  hour  could  even  a  millionth  of  the  things 
worth  seeing,  hearing,  knowing,  in  the  world  be  ac- 
quired by  any  mortal.  Yet  relentlessly  the  chase  goes 
on. 

There  are  those  who  delve  into  the  antique ;  those 
who  devote  themselves  to  merely  the  newest  emana- 
tions; those  who  attempt  both.  All  fail;  culture  es- 
capes them  all;  it  is  not  to  be  had  for  the  pursuing; 
it  chooses  to  abide  here  or  there ;  but  it  is  never  to 
be  compelled  by  this  or  that  lure,  this  or  that  feverish 
zeal. 

Always  we  are  before  the  problem  which  the 
Africans  put  into  their  saying  that  "the  morrow 
never  comes";  culture  may  once  have  been  and  may 
again  be,  but  it  never  is.  Some  have  it,  not  knowing 
they  have  it;  nor  does  it  insist  on  the  acquisition  of 
knowledge  on  the  part  of  those  it  may  choose  to 
favor ;  it  is  something  finer  than  mere  learning.  Yet, 


BERLIN,    NEWEST    OF    CITIES      169 

utterly  intangible  as  it  is,  culture  charms  its  devotees 
into  a  ceaseless  pursuit. 

CONSIDERING  only  the  very  newest  of  the  manifes- 
tations in  the  world  of  art,  of  the  theaters  or  of  let- 
ters, the  pursuit  of  culture  has  indeed  reached  one 
of  its  most  curious  phases  in  Berlin.  To  Berlin  the 
American  culture-crowd  should  point,  if  they  would 
see  the  hum  of  it  at  the  liveliest.  In  Berlin  culture 
has  reached  the  point  where  it  fills  a  circus  with 
thousands. 

Heretofore  culture  has  moved  small  groups,  clubs, 
societies,  village  reading  circles,  round-the-world 
excursions.  In  the  art  of  the  theater  especially  the 
select  crowds  have  had  the  loudest  word  for  culture; 
Ibsen  flourished  first  in  small,  intimate  theaters; 
Porto-Riche,  Wedekind,  Schnitzler,  Galsworthy, 
Barker,  Shaw,  and  the  rest  were  instrumental  chiefly 
in  giving  small  audiences  in  small  theaters  the  feel- 
ing that  they,  and  they  only,  were  the  elect  in  culture- 
land. 

Always,  in  the  theater  or  in  paint,  there  were  the 
alien  geniuses  who  were  welcomed,  largely,  again,  in 
order  that  a  chosen  set  might  preen  themselves  upon 
the  possession  of  more  culture  than  their  neighbors; 
in  this  way  served  such  men  as  Sorolla,  Zuloaga,  and 
Cezanne.  .  There  are  always  critics,  in  every  depart- 
ment of  art,  who  live  entirely  upon  a  genius  for  pro- 
moting the  alien  and  neglecting  the  greater  artist 
around  the  corner.  Where  would  be  the  profit  in  a 
culture  that  all  men  might  enjoy?  Where  is  the  vir- 
tue in  proclaiming  Jones,  who  lives  in  the  same  town, 
a  genius?  A  man  who  speaks  the  same  tongue,  who 


1 70  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

was  once  of  the  same  set,  an  ordinary  fellow  like 
the  critic  himself?  No,  by  culture,  no! 

But  Berlin  has  gone  all  this  little  affair  of  cliques 
and  circles  one  better.  It  introduced  culture  in 
wholesale  portions,  culture  at  a  circus,  and  culture 
by  special  trains.  Daily  Berlin  looks  in  its  glass,  and 
is  sure  it  sees  Culture,  culture.  An  industry,  nothing 
less,  is  Berlin  culture ;  and  unfortunate  they  who  have 
no  stock  in  that  G.  M.  B.  H. — Limited  Liability 
Company. 

No,  America  has  not  had  anything  like  that  yet. 
Of  Baireuth  and  Oberammergau  one  could  declare 
that  it  was  largely  America  which  dominated  in  the 
culture-seeking  crowd.  But  Berliners,  and  Berliners 
only,  filled  the  specials  that  went  once  a  week  to 
Dresden  the  first  season  to  hear  the  "Rosencavalier," 
and  it  was  Berlin  itself  that  filled  the  circus  where 
Max  Rheinhardt  was  tickling  its  appetite  for  pic- 
turesque culture.  Berliners  thought  nothing  of  sit- 
ting for  four  hours  to  see  Rheinhardt's  production 
of  the  second  part  of  "Faust";  their  physical  en- 
durance stops  at  nothing  in  pursuit  of  culture. 
Goethe  to-day,  and  Von  Hoffmansthal  to-morrow; 
Berlin  talked  of  "Oedipus"  in  the  intervals  of  talk- 
ing of  "Faust"  and  "Sumurun." 

The  last-named  pantomime,  Japanese  in  subject, 
was  by  Fredrich  Freska,  a  German,  and  all  the  critics 
praised  Herr  Reinhardt's  arrangement  of  scene  and 
music  as  the  greatest  triumph  in  the  history  of  mod- 
ern pantomime,  and  Berlin  thrilled  in  pleasure,  and 
certainly  of  its  being  indeed  the  center  of  culture. 
Yet  what  was  new  in  the  scenic  management  of 


BERLIN,    NEWEST    OF    CITIES      171 

"Sumurun"  was  as  much  Gordon  Craig's  as  Rein- 
hardt's,  and  those  who  knew  of  a  culture  not  bounded 
by  the  city  limits  of  Berlin  knew  also  that  Stanis- 
lawsky  and  Soulerjitsky  of  the  Art  Theater  in  Mos- 
cow, that  Fritz  Erler,  Julius  Diez,  T.  T.  Heine,  and 
others  of  the  Munich  Artists'  Theater,  and  that  the 
men  of  the  Dublin  Art  Theater,  had  prepared  the 
way  which  Reinhardt  now  cannily  and  spectacularly 
follows. 

Herr  Reinhardt,  genius  in  theatricalism  as  he  is, 
is  still  a  greater  genius  in  fooling  the  culture  mob. 
He  has  started  the  imitative  appetites  of  the  culture- 
mad  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic.  Tragedy  and 
pantomime  and  even  individual  cabaret  talents  like 
that  Berlin  amalgam  of  Guilbert  and  George  Robey, 
Claire  Waldoff — he  juggles  them  all  for  the  amaze- 
ment of  those  dullards  who  had  not  realized  that 
there  was  as  much  money  to  be  made  out  of  culture 
as  out  of  anything  else,  if  you  knew  how  to  go  about 
it.  If  only  the  promoters  of  the  New  Theater  in 
New  York  had  known  enough  to  engage  Max  Rein- 
hardt, their  scheme  of  plutocratic  culture  might  not 
have  failed  so  ingloriously. 

Whether  Americans  would  sit  four  hours  one  day 
and  four  hours  the  next  to  see  a  "Faust"  is  another 
question.  But  no  strain  is  too  great  for  the  true 
Berlin  pursuivant  of  culture.  An  entire  day  to  Dres- 
den is  not  so  much  if  you  compare  it  with  the  months 
Americans  will  devote  to  a  coronation  or  Baireuth; 
yet  it  was  no  slight  physical  strain;  a  special  train 
down,  then  three  of  the  most  tedious  acts  of  libretto 
and  music  you  ever  listened  to,  and  then  a  special 


172  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

train  back  to  Berlin,  the  whole  journey  blue  with 
talk,  talk,  talk  of  music,  Strauss,  Von  Hoffmansthal, 
"Rosencavalier,"  culture,  culture. 

Yes,  whisper  it  not  in  cultured  ears,  the  "Rosen- 
cavalier"  story  is  the  dullest  thing  Von  Hoffmansthal 
ever  wrote,  and  went  near  to  killing  the  Strauss  music 
in  its  prime.  The  first  act  has  noble  music;  the  sec- 
ond begins  well  and  ends  well,  and  is  deadly  dull  in 
the  middle;  and  the  third  act,  but  for  the  last  ten 
minutes,  would  damn  any  opera  that  had  not  been  so 
magnificently  advertised  as  necessary  in  the  pursuit 
of  culture.  Von  Hoffmansthal  is  never  so  sad  as 
when  he  tries  to  be  comic;  the  passages  intended  to 
work  funnily  in  the  "Rosencavalier"  are  of  an  im- 
penetrable melancholy. 

But,  whether  the  piece  was  comic  where  it  meant 
to  be  sad,  or  sad  where  it  tried  to  be  comic,  what 
cared  Berlin,  so  the  "Rosencavalier"  spelt  culture? 
Not  to  have  heard  this  or  that  supreme  detail  in 
culture,  this  or  that  triumph  of  Strauss,  or  Rein- 
hardt,  is  to  bring  upon  yourself  the  scorn  of  all 
Berlin. 

Upon  the  hard  Prussian  faces,  hastening  along  the 
streets  of  Berlin  all  day  and  all  night,  you  find  two 
expressions  written;  one  says,  Prosperity;  the  other 
says,  Culture.  You  can  hear  the  hum  of  both, 
audibly,  like  the  sound  of  distant  riot. 

In  Boston  or  Berlin,  in  Vienna  or  Paris,  the  flying 
squadron  in  pursuit  of  culture  must  never  stop  for 
ironic  reflections.  It  must  not  pause  to  think,  para- 
doxic  as  that  may  be.  It  must  hurry,  hurry  on,  lest 
culture  escape. 


BERLIN,    NEWEST   OF    CITIES     173 

YET  culture  is  not,  if  it  exist  at  all,  a  mathematical 
concept,  nor  yet,  as  in  Berlin,  an  incident  in  a  profit- 
able enterprise.  It  is  an  affair  of  the  emotions;  it 
is  a  spiritual  atmospheric  effect.  And  if  one  is  to 
feel  that  effect,  those  emotions,  it  will  not  be  in  Ber- 
lin, but  in  Vienna.  At  which,  of  course,  the  North- 
Germans  will  smile  ironically.  Yet  I  venture  to  say 
that  if  a  flying  squadron  of  the  culture  army  were  to 
visit  the  town  of  Professors  Koloman  Moser,  Hoff- 
man and  Otto  Prutscher,  their  work  in  architecture, 
interior  decoration,  jewelry,  and  every  possible  form 
of  applied  art  would  be  admitted  beautiful  enough 
to  make  even  the  most  ironic  observer  declare  that 
if  culture  indeed  exists,  it  must  be  in  the  town  where 
such  lovely  things  as  those  are  fashioned. 

Truly  a  curious  thing,  culture.  In  London  they 
are  long  since  beyond  it,  though  they  have  never  had 
it.  In  the  time  of  Wilde  there  was  a  set  which  called 
itself  the  Souls;  but  today  it  has  ceased  to  be  worth 
London's  while  to  pretend  culture,  save  only  where 
a  German  flavor  obtains  in  this  or  that  new  set.  Cul- 
ture is  simply  taken  for  granted,  as  is  everything,  in 
England.  It  is  bad  form  to  declare  things  plainly; 
one  simply  doesn't  do  that  sort  of  thing.  In  London 
they  are  as  far  beyond  culture  as  in  Berlin  they  are 
above  good  manners. 

Does  culture,  then,  indeed  exist?  Ah,  no  two 
answers  to  that  will  ever  be  alike.  Is  it,  perhaps, 
never  more  than  a  legend?  Only  those  can  answer 
who  have  felt,  who  have  breathed,  fully  and  pas- 
sionately; those  who  live  more  deeply  in  life  itself 
than  in  make-believes. 


174  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

III 

ART   APPETITE    COMPARED   WITH    BOSTON 

THAT  culture  is  ever  acquired,  or  even  that  cul- 
ture exists,  we  may  doubt;  but  the  tremendous  extent 
of  the  pursuit  of  it,  of  the  appetite,  let  us  say,  for 
art,  it  is  impossible  to  deny.  It  may  not  be  without 
interest  to  examine,  a  trifle  ironically,  or  at  least  com- 
paringly,  certain  characteristics  through  which  that 
appetite  expresses  itself  in  some  of  the  larger  art 
centers  of  our  time,  especially  Berlin  and  Boston. 
For  these  two  have  much  in  common  when  it  comes 
to  art  appetite. 

THE  casual  visitor  to  Boston  must  always  be  tre- 
menduously  impressed  by  the  continuous  thronging 
to  the  Museum  of  Art  which  occurs  when  any  famous 
loan  collection  is  on  view.  In  the  proper  Boston  con- 
templation, from  within  rather  than  without  the 
gates,  that  is,  of  course,  no  more  than  an  incident  in 
a  farspread  appreciation  of  art  which  has  since  al- 
most legendary  times  been  taken  for  granted  as  typi- 
cal of  the  town.  The  existence  of  such  art  interest  is 
not  easily  to  be  doubted  after  noting  some  popular 
expressions  of  it,  which  come  to  little  less  than  a 
mobbing  of  the  Museum. 

What  notably  impresses  always  in  the  Boston  pro- 
cession of  enthusiasts  struggling  toward  this  or  that 
half-hundred  of  reputed  masterpieces  in  paint  is  the 
completeness  with  which  this  town's  huge  business  of 
educating  and  cultivating  artistic  and  aesthetic  ten- 
dencies has  made  its  way  into  the  very  warp  of  the 


BERLIN,    NEWEST    OF    CITIES      175 

plain  people's  lives.  In  the  Boston  mob  which  is 
content  to  shuffle  for  forty  minutes,  imperfectly  com* 
fortable  and  insufficiently  swept  by  ozone,  through 
marble  halls,  for  the  sake  of  one  roomful  of  pic- 
tures, the  alien  observer,  intimately  acquainted  with 
the  habits  of  other  great  galleries,  finds  features  of 
no  small  interest.  Mingled  with  the  obvious  mem- 
bers of  that  huge  colony  which  is  in  Boston  to  learn 
this,  that  or  the  other — a  colony  recruited  from  the 
entire  American  continent  to  an  extent  which  those 
persons  who  live  by  figures  alone  must  surely  long 
since  have  computed  as  constituting  an  enormously 
valuable  asset  in  the  Boston  fortune! — are  persons 
of  every  conceivable  sort  and  condition,  in  a  variety, 
in  short,  approached  only  in  Munich  or  Berlin. 
Aside  from  the  more  well-to-do,  who  are  to  be  ex- 
pected at  such  occasions  anywhere  in  the  world,  there 
are  always,  in  Boston,  such  numbers  of  the  plain  peo- 
ple, of  all  ages,  as  will  be  found  under  like  circum- 
stances in  no  other  town  in  America.  The  cynical 
explanation  would,  we  may  presume,  be  that  the 
student  colony  so  spreads  through  the  town  that 
hardly  a  single  household  is  untouched  by  its  life  and 
its  talk.  And  it  is  talk,  as  I  asserted  on  a  previous 
page,  and  as  this  present  contemplation  of  the  sub- 
ject is  more  specifically  to  point  out,  that  chiefly 
spreads  the  public  interest  in  any  art.  It  is  what 
people  say  of  this  book  or  that  play  which  determines 
its  fate. 

THE  town  to  which  Boston  comes  nearest  in  the 
extent  of  its  student-colony  as  a  factor  in  the  general 
art  appreciation  is  Berlin.  There,  too,  whether  it 


1 76  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

is  in  the  Museum,  the  National  Gallerie,  the  annual 
show  of  the  Kunst-Ausstellung,  or  even  the  little 
gathering  of  secessionist  stuff  on  the  Kurfursten- 
damn,  you  will  find  the  avid,  garrulous  student  type 
mingling  with  the  ordinary  citizen  of  every  degree. 
There,  too,  you  will  find  the  patter  and  chatter  of 
the  studios  and  the  students  pointing  the  way  for  the 
comment  of  the  less  expert  burgesses  who  find  it  as 
necessary  to  prop  their  station  in  life  with  conversa- 
tion about  art  as  with  conversation  on  politics.  Ber- 
lin, like  Boston,  counts  its  students  of  music,  of  art, 
of  almost  every  form  of  aesthetics  and  science,  as 
among  its  most  valuable  features.  Entire  house- 
holds, entire  quarters  of  the  town,  are  swayed  by  the 
necessities  or  desires  of  the  student  population;  there 
are  innumerable  "pensions"  where  the  ordinary  bar- 
barian in  Berlin  must  needs  train  his  stomach  to  ac- 
custom itself  to  most  amazing  hours  for  meals  in 
order  that  this  or  that  "class"  in  music  or  paint  may 
be  accessible  to  the  dominant  student  members  of 
the  household.  Perhaps  in  Boston,  too,  a  certain 
tendency  toward  dyspepsia  is  similarly  to  be  ac- 
counted for. 

In  Munich  the  art  students  dominate  the  scene. 
At  certain  seasons  of  the  year,  of  course,  they 
dwindle  in  significance  before  the  gallery-devouring 
tourist,  who  treads  from  the  Pinakothek  to  the 
Glyptothek,  and  thence  to  the  Glas-Palast,  with  firm 
and  grim  determination.  The  Anglo-Saxon  tourist, 
indeed,  typifies,  when  abroad  in  the  picture  galleries 
of  the  world,  the  keen  appetite  for  art  of  your  proper 
Bostonian.  The  color-stuff  that  is  to  be  the  day's 
fare  for  eye  and  mind  must  be  swallowed ;  no  matter 


BERLIN,    NEWEST    OF    CITIES     177 

how  large  the  dose,  how  fine  or  how  coarse,  it  must 
be  swallowed;  as  to  mastication,  assimilation,  diges- 
tion: these  things  must  take  their  chances.  There 
are  certain  duties  that  one  owes  to  one's  station  in 
life,  to  one's  country,  to  one's  town;  the  first  of  these, 
in  the  detail  of  pictures,  is  to  see  as  many  as  possible. 
The  point  is:  we  went  through  every  gallery  in  Eu- 
rope ;  or,  we  have  seen  every  collection  that  has  been 
in  the  Museum  of  Art  since  it  was  opened! 

To  reach  the  conclusion  that  there  is  a  fraction 
of  spuriousness  about  the  art  appreciation  of  the 
majority  one  has  only  to  widen  one's  own  experience 
of  the  galleries  of  the  world,  and  to  keep  one's  ears 
open  to  the  stuff  that  is  talked  about  pictures.  Surely 
there  can  be  nothing  more  piteous  to  the  real  lover 
of  Florence,  its  cool  and  lovely  opportunities  for 
lingering,  individual  and  precious  enjoyment  of  its 
countless  treasures,  than  to  observe  those  sad  pro- 
cessions scurrying  through  the  Pitti  and  the  Ufizi 
following  the  rapid  commonplaces  of  this  or  that 
uninspired  guide !  They  troop  like  sheep  following 
a  harassed  shepherd;  they  are  hurried  from  master- 
piece to  masterpiece;  they  see  with  the  eyes  of  a  flock, 
not  of  individuals;  they  listen  to  the  opinions  of 
others;  they  are  swallowing,  swallowing,  just  as  all 
Boston  swallows,  just  as  swallow  all  Iowa,  and  Chi- 
cago, and  all  the  thousands  of  Americans  who  read 
the  constitutional  phrase  as  "life,  liberty  and  the  pur- 
suit of  culture."  They  swallow  enough  to  provide 
themselves  with  certain  first  principles  of  conversa- 
tion; and  there  you  have  what  they  are  really  after; 
whether  they  digest  anything  is  something  they  are 
willing  to  leave  to  luck. 


178  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

It  is  in  the  average  conversation  about  art,  in  what 
people  say  while  they  stand  in  the  galleries,  or  while 
they  sit  at  dinner  afterwards,  that  you  will  get  your 
test  of  whether  people,  in  this  or  that  quarter  of  the 
world,  do  their  own  thinking  about  art.  Mixing 
with  the  more  or  less  fashionable  throng  in  Burling- 
ton House  in  any  spring  of  any  year,  what  you  will 
hear  the  Londoners  and  provincials  saying  will 
hardly  convince  you  that  the  average  English  are 
concerned  much  beyond  what  is  the  most  attractive 
portrait  of  the  most  "fashionable  beauty"  of  the  sea- 
son, or  what  is  the  "anecdote"  on  canvas  which  the 
leading  journals  have  declared  the  picture  of  the 
year.  In  Philadelphia,  every  spring,  you  will  find  the 
curious  spectacle  of  what  is  perhaps  the  nearest  ap- 
proach to  a  representative  annual  "Salon"  in  Amer- 
ica without  any  element  of  real  Philadelphia  in  it. 
The  exhibition  simply  happens  to  be  in  Philadelphia ; 
but  the  people  who  make  up  the  visiting  apprecia- 
tion come  from  all  over  the  East;  Philadelphia  itself 
contributes  nothing  to  the  color  or  note  of  the  crowd 
in  the  gallery.  In  Florence,  beyond  the  rapid  gabble 
of  the  speeding  lecturers,  the  occasionally  genuine 
word  of  appreciation  or  understanding  that  you  may 
hear  will  not  be  in  English.  Nor  yet  in  Munich,  nor 
in  Berlin. 

The  gallery  conversations  of  London  have  been 
sketched  so  delightfully  by  F.  Anstey  and  Pett  Ridge, 
among  others,  that  one  need  do  no  more  than  say 
they  have  all  those  features  in  repetition  of  what 
other  people  have  printed  or  said  which  distinguish 
human  conversation  everywhere.  Whether  a  plain 
cockney  is  expounding  the  obvious  in  analysis  of  some 


BERLIN,    NEWEST   OF   CITIES     179 

painted  story  by  Mr.  Collyer  that  is  as  unimaginative 
as  a  page  of  Euclid;  or  a  Bostonian  student,  over- 
sophicated  in  phrases  and  unilluminated  by  candor, 
is  going  into  raptures  over  a  certain  picture  because 
it  is  by  a  famous  painter  and  depicts  a  famous  woman 
for  whom  a  famous  man  made  a  fool  of  himself — 
the  insincerity  and  parrotry  of  the  stuff  that  is  talked 
about  art  is  much  the  same  all  over  the  world. 

WHAT  is  needed  to  purge  the  majority's  adolescent 
art  appreciation  of  much  of  its  insincerity  is  some 
candid  barbarism.  It  is  not,  to-day,  any  fine  aborigi- 
nal, individual  expression  of  opinion,  however  bar- 
baric or  unorthodox,  that  you  will  hear  in  any  gal- 
lery in  America,  from  the  Boston  Art  Museum  to  the 
Corcoran  in  Washington.  The  stuff  you  will  hear  is 
the  voice  either  of  the  backpsch,  sickly  with  senti- 
mentality and  imitated  dilutions  of  it,  or  of  the  would- 
be  sophisticated  chatterer  of  phrases  caught  from  the 
studio  or  from  literature.  Cant  and  not  candor  is 
in  the  air.  For  one  note  of  genuine  opinion,  naturally 
expressed — and  how  quickly  the  note  of  an  indi- 
vidual, of  spontaneous  sincerity,  may  be  discerned 
out  of  a  welter  of  imitative  chatter! — you  will  hear 
ten  which  are  nothing  but  the  backfisch  version  of 
Tomlinson's  uye  have  seen,  ye  have  heard,"  etc.  If 
Boston  be  that  town  on  the  American  continent  most 
sophisticated  in  matters  of  art,  a  town  fuller  than 
any  other  of  the  grim  pursuers  of  that  will-'o-the- 
wisp,  culture,  then  Boston,  too,  needs  an  infusion  of 
forthright  barbarism  more  than  any  other. 

The  barbarian  in  art  may  be  simply  an  untutored 
individual  spontaneously  expressing  natural  sincerity; 


i8o  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

or  he  may  be  one  who  has  triumphantly  reached  bar- 
barism after  nausea  from  too  much  sophistication. 
Lorado  Taft  is  of  the  latter  class.  But  so  you  be 
genuinely  barbaric,  your  road  to  barbarism  need  not 
matter.  What  matters  is  your  courage  for  frank- 
ness. The  sophisticated  barbarian  reaches  his  eman- 
cipation after  much  sloughing  off  of  old  habits  of 
imitation  and  cant  and  patter.  There  comes  a  mo- 
ment of  illumination ;  suddenly  the  eyes  that  have  for 
years  seen  no  painting  without  a  veil  of  other  peo- 
ple's phrases,  printed  or  spoken,  open  to  the  value  of 
individual  interpretation.  To  see  the  thing  itself,  not 
the  thing  through  the  study  or  the  studio ;  that  is  the 
rare  sight.  The  barbarian,  as  we  have  seen,  has 
courage,  in  the  Uffizi  of  Florence  to  prefer  to  all  the 
other  starred  and  mob-scarred  corridors  that  room 
where  the  artists  of  our  own  generation  have  shown 
portraits  of  themselves,  Millais,  Herkomer,  Sar- 
gent and  all  the  splendid  rest,  while  the  led  sheep 
upstairs  imbibe  the  pseudo-literary,  pseudo-artistic 
commonplaces  of  a  perfunctory  phrasemaker  at 
wholesale  rates,  passing  from  one  all  too  "storied" 
canvas  to  another.  Both  in  Boston  and  Berlin, 
where  the  backfisch  is  most  relentlessly  in  dominance, 
some  fine  barbaric  frenzy,  compact  of  humor  and 
humanity,  should  overthrow  these  pestilent  literary 
attitudes  toward  art. 

Have  you  ever  thought  how  strangely  the  human 
trend  has  chosen  to  differ  in  its  attitude  toward  the 
theater  and  toward  paint?  Where  nine  out  of  ten 
people  in  a  theater  never  know  the  names  of  the 
playwright,  but  only  of  the  actors,  in  a  picture  gal- 
lery the  names  are  everything.  "Ah,"  says  the  back- 


BERLIN,    NEWEST    OF    CITIES      181 

fisch  from  Iowa,  or  Vermont,  or  Chicago — or  from 
Pasewalk  or  Danzig  or  Pasing — -"Lady  Hamilton! 
How  perfectly  sweet!  I  could  look  at  those  eyes 
all  day.  A  Romney — how  perfectly  fascinating!" 
Item:  the  name  of  the  artist  assured  her  it  was  safe 
to  gush;  item:  the  name  of  the  sitter  added  the  scrap 
of  historic  and  literary  value  needed  to  complete  the 
proprietary  of  our  backfisch  joining  the  chorus  of 
the  other  intellectual  backfisch. 

The  backfisch  has  been  too  long  triumphant.  In- 
ternational she  is,  as  well  as  immortal.  Fourteen 
or  forty,  she  swells  the  great  oratorio  of  other  peo- 
ple's opinions  about  art.  She  is  not  so  much  a  hu- 
man phenomenon  as  a  state  of  mind ;  as  Von  Buelow's 
tenor  was  a  disease.  She  finds  a  landscape  by  Corot 
"attractive,"  just  as  in  Baltimore  they  declare  a  new 
frock  or  a  young  man  from  New  York  "attractive"; 
the  Corot  may  be  an  abortive  daub,  but  she  only 
knows  that  it  is  "a  Corot."  Barbaric  courage  to 
like  a  picture  without  having  heard  the  name  of  the 
painter  is  not  hers.  She  is  wedded  to  her  catalogue; 
she  feasts,  like  Beau  Brummel  as  the  late  Richard 
Mansfield  showed  him  in  that  last  fine  scene  in  the 
Calais  garret,  "off  the  names  of  things."  It  is  the 
backfisch  who  protects  the  experts  who  write  of  art 
in  terms  of  all  the  other  arts,  making  confusion  and 
mysticism  deeper  than  ever.  It  is  she  who  has  pro- 
duced the  "programme  writer"  in  criticism  of  music, 
and  the  Chopinesque  critic  of  paint. 

If  only  the  backfisch  would  keep  still!  But  that 
is  just  it;  she  dominates  the  conversation!  She  has 
neither  ego  nor  cosmos,  but  she  has  a  voice.  The 
true  lovers  of  art  seldom  tell  their  love.  That  finest 


1 82  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

authority  on  art,  ancient  and  modern,  in  all  Florence, 
Riccardo  Nobili,  might  have  you  in  his  house  for 
months,  and  you  would  hear  no  word  from  him  about 
art. 

To  impress  the  others,  the  lodgers  on  the  Pots- 
damerstrasse  or  Newbury  Street,  that  is  the  aim  and 
end  of  too  much  that  is  prattled  and  chattered  of 
art  to-day. 

Let  us  whisper  to  the  prattlers  of  phrases,  who  see 
miles  of  canvas  through  literature  only,  that  many 
wise  men  who  have  foreseen  the  future  in  the  for- 
tunes of  art,  have  been  barbarians.  George  Moore 
was  one  of  the  most  barbaric  who  ever  looked  at  a 
painting;  and  if  you  had  been  as  barbaric  as  he,  and 
realized  Whistler  before  the  parrots  and  the  fash- 
ionable did,  you  might  be  rich  to-day.  That  hack- 
neyed remark  concluding:  .  .  .  ubut  I  know  what 
I  like"  has  too  long,  to  suit  a  Gelett  Burgess  whim, 
been  called  a  bromide;  it  is  nothing  but  a  battle-cry 
of  barbarism  that  should  be  flung  abroad  more  than 
it  is.  To  go  no  other  person's  way,  but  your  own; 
to  echo  no  praise  though  a  million  artistic  gospels 
point  the  path — that  is  true  barbarism.  Because  the 
others  babble  in  one  generation  of  Cezanne,  Ma- 
tisse, Van  Geogh,  Gauguin  and  the  post-impression- 
ists, in  another  of  Sisley,  or  Manet,  or  Slevogt,  that 
is  no  reason  why  one  should  pretend  an  opinion 
about  them  when  one  really  has  none  at  all.  "I  do 
not  give  one  solitary  hang"  is  part  of  the  barbarian's 
candid  armor.  The  barbarian  is  not  a  vandal,  as  is 
the  modernizer  of  old  Florence.  The  barbarian 
need  not  be  bourgeois;  need  not  mean  the  statues  of 
Begas,  the  taste  of  a  Hohenzollern  or  a  Guelph. 


BERLIN,    NEWEST    OF    CITIES      183 

The  French,  most  sophisticated  in  art,  can  be  the 
most  barbaric. 

To  see  things  as  they  are,  without  glasses  furnished 
arrogantly  by  experts,  or  by  literature,  that  is  to  be 
barbarian. 

IV 

NIGHT    LIFE 

ONE  more  comparison  remains,  as  we  examine 
Berlin's  right  to  rank  among  the  world-towns.  We 
have  looked  into  cooking,  and  into  various  facets  of 
that  glittering  moonstone,  culture.  But  it  is  not  of 
her  countless  feeding  troughs,  her  garish  beer  pal- 
aces, her  efforts  to  form  a  world-embracing  Combine 
out  of  culture,  that  Berlin,  in  her  heart  of  hearts,  is 
proudest.  No,  the  one  domain  wherein  she  pretends 
to  indisputable  eminence  is  Night  Life.  To  con- 
sider her  right  to  that  eminence  we  must  consider 
also  some  of  her  rivals. 

An  amazing  discussion  goes  back  and  forth  across 
the  English  Channel  every  now  and  again.  Like 
most  discussions,  most  arguments,  it  is  rooted  in 
wrong  premises,  reaches  false  conclusions,  and 
leaves  all  the  disputants  believing  exactly  what  they 
did  before.  The  question  is,  for  one  thing,  whether 
London  is  dull,  and,  for  another,  whether  Berlin  is 
less  dull.  Emphasis,  of  course,  goes  largely  upon 
the  detail  of  night  life. 

Suppose,  from  this  safe  distance,  though  armed 
with  all  the  necessary  facts,  the  experience,  and  the 
susceptibility  to  emotions,  that  we  look  at  the  ques- 
tion more  widely  than  if  it  concerned  only  London 


1 84  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

and  Berlin.  For,  in  any  comparative  observation, 
it  becomes  necessary  to  range  Paris  and  Vienna  with 
those  others.  To  include  Brussels,  Budapest,  Naples 
and  the  rest  would  lead  too  far;  national  and  racial 
characteristics  and  differences  can  be  sufficiently 
gauged  in  the  quartet  just  mentioned. 

FOR  London  to  have  tried  to  defend  herself  from 
the  charge  of  being  dead  and  buried  after  a  com- 
paratively early  midnight  hour  must  ever  be  a  proof 
of  an  insular  immunity  from  the  irony  of  facts.  All 
of  us  who  know  our  London  at  all  know  that  how- 
ever much  we  may  be  on  the  inside  of  life  at  its  most 
sophisticated,  its  most  autocratic,  we  are  neverthe- 
less bounced  on  to  the  cold  street  when  the  County 
Council  hour  strikes. 

We  may  be  sitting  with  all  the  potentates  and 
powers  at  the  Savoy,  the  Carlton,  the  Ritz,  the  Berk- 
eley, or  any  of  their  peers,  but  when  that  hour  ap- 
proaches the  servitor's  whisper,  "Five  minutes,  gen- 
tlemen!" falls  upon  the  just  and  the  unjust  alike,  and 
at  the  minute  itself  the  lights  go  out,  and  there  is 
nothing  for  us  to  do  but  follow  suit. 

And  then,  once  upon  the  street,  where  is  the  night 
life  of  London?  Ah,  ask  of  the  winds!  You  might 
as  well;  it  will  profit  you  just  as  much  as  if  you  asked 
of  the  policeman  on  the  beat.  Belated  taxis  toot 
past;  one  or  two  forlorn  relics  of  that  fine  romantic 
era  typified  by  the  hansom  cab  go  jingling  by;  some 
amazed  and  dazed  aliens  wander  about  Piccadilly 
Circus  seeking  for  the  livelier  vices  and  the  more 
brilliant  glitter  of  their  own  towns;  the  real  Lon- 
don is  dead.  Stray  creatures,  some  in  rags,  and 


BERLIN,    NEWEST    OF   CITIES      185 

some  in  all  the  elaborate  black  and  white  splendor 
of  evening  masculine  regimentals,  wander  homeward 
on  foot,  some  of  them  seeking  food  and  hot  coffee 
in — and  here  you  have  the  sufficient  comment  upon 
London's  nocturnal  state ! — the  cab  shelters,  equiva- 
lent to  our  American  owl  lunch  wagons.  A  hawker 
selling  chestnuts,  or  hot  potatoes;  a  bird  of  prey  or 
two  smelling  of  patchouli ;  the  rest  is  silence  and  deso- 
lation. At  the  County  Council  hour  everything  goes 
dark  and  dumb. 

What,  then,  has  London  in  the  way  of  gayety  after 
candlelight?  What  can  visitors  find  for  amusement 
after  their  hard  work  of  sightseeing  in  daylight? 
Well,  they  may  dine  to-day  in  thirty  times  as  many 
cosmopolitan  restaurants  as  they  could  in  the  London 
of  fifteen  years  ago,  for  one  thing.  If  London  to-day 
is  but  a  gray  place  for  those  on  nocturnal  pleasure 
bent,  it  is  a  very  glitter  of  color  compared  to  what 
it  was  fifteen  years  ago. 

The  old  Londoner,  of  course,  regrets  the  passing 
of  his  cozy  old  town;  he  sees  the  riddling  of  it  by 
tubes,  the  increase  of  gorgeous  and  florid  eating 
places,  the  passing  away  of  old  and  dingy  corners 
wherein  people  had  for  a  century  fed  badly  for  no 
other  reason  than  that  their  forefathers  had  done 
so — he  sees  all  this  with  distress  and  anger.  But 
the  stranger  within  the  gates  may  bless  his  stars  that 
he  does  not  have  to  depend  for  his  food  and  drink 
upon  that  now  vanished  London. 

The  London  of  to-day,  as  most  of  us  know,  is  as 
new  a  town  as  any  of  the  others  in  the  world.  To 
find  there  the  old,  to-day — well,  none  but  the  hard- 
iest Americans  attempt  it;  the  Londoner  himself  has 


1 86  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

given  it  up  long  ago.  To  repeat,  then:  one  has  a 
good  range  of  places  wherein  to  dine,  of  theaters 
wherein  to  sit  for  the  bulk  of  the  evening,  and  of 
places  wherein  to  sup  after  the  play.  But  with  that 
the  tale  has  been  told.  If  you  want  a  glittering  frolic 
which  you  have  imagined  to  yourself  under  the  title 
of  "London  at  Night,"  you  will  have  to  end  it  as 
you  began  it,  in  your  dreams.  You  dine,  you  watch 
the  play,  you  hear  music,  you  sup,  and  then — off  to 
bed  with  you.  By  order  of  the  County  Council. 

Let  us  bless  the  County  Council.  The  most  timor- 
ous mother  might  let  her  tenderest  fledgeling  boy  go 
unprotected  across  the  West  End  of  London  in  the 
small  hours  of  the  morning,  from  Mayfair  to  Bel- 
gravia,  from  Bayswater  to  Whitehall,  from  Kensing- 
ton to  Marylebone,  and  he  would  be  immune  from 
the  din  of  gayety,  the  infection  of  merriment,  the 
sound  and  air  of  pleasure.  This  is  not  to  say — alas 
for  the  plans  of  County  Councils,  and  all  other  hu- 
man devices  to  sterilize  the  human  tendencies  in  the 
race ! — that  the  aforesaid  milkwhite  youth  might  not 
run  into  some  dismal,  drab,  or  dirty  iniquity  in  the 
modern  Babylon.  Man  is  not  less  vile  there  than 
elsewhere;  nor  woman,  either;  over  essential  human 
frailties  no  County  Councils  have  jurisdiction.  For 
those  who  take  their  pleasures  sadly  and  darkly  not 
even  London  is  without  temptation  after  midnight. 
But  from  nocturnal  gayety  the  town  is  immune.  The 
Goddess  of  Pleasure  pulls  the  curtain  at  the  Coun- 
cil's closing  hour.  The  wayfarer  is  left  in  outer 
darkness.  If  he  feels  he  must  needs  be  a  gay  dog 
until  dawn,  there  is  nothing  for  him  save  his  home 
or  his  club. 


BERLIN,    NEWEST   OF    CITIES     187 

Even  the  clubs — well,  this  is  not  the  place  for  a 
dissertation  on  the  different  air  of  clubs  in  England 
as  against  that  in  America,  but  no  man  in  his  senses 
yet  went  to  a  London  club  for  small-hour  gayety. 
It  is  true  that  the  new  Automobile  Club  is  become 
seriously  a  competitor  of  the  existing  public  supper 
resorts,  and  that  eventually  some  pleasurable  after- 
math on  supper  may  be  permitted  there;  but  we  are 
not  all  motor-minded.  Again,  a  segregated  gayety, 
in  four  walls,  in  even  the  most  splendid  of  clubs,  is 
not  what  most  people  mean  when  they  speak  of  this 
or  that  town's  night  life  of  pleasure. 

As  for  Paris,  its  night  life  is  a  tale  that  has  been 
so  often  told  that  no  good  American  can  be  supposed 
ignorant  of  its  features.  The  details  of  such  a  night 
in  Paris,  as  every  foreigner  permits  himself  at  least 
once  in  his  life,  are  become  so  common  that  there  is 
hardly  a  hamlet  in  the  remotest  region  of  Suburbia 
or  the  backwoods  where  the  mention  of  "gay  Paree" 
will  not  arouse  reminiscences  in  the  meekest-seeming 
habitant.  Let  the  subject  of  Paris  come  up  in  the 
unlikeliest  crew  of  human  beings,  on  land  or  sea, 
around  the  village  grocery  store,  or  the  smoking 
room  of  the  most  luxurious  ocean  liner,  and  at  once 
the  gamut  of  gayety  will  be  reviewed  again  by  old 
and  young,  the  bored  and  the  ambitious.  Students 
of  art  have  their  version  of  it;  the  indiscriminate 
tourists  and  sightseers  have  another,  and  keen  gour- 
mets of  sensation  have  another.  That  night  life  in 
Paris  provides  a  feast  for  all  appetites  is  admitted. 

Literature  has  recorded  all  the  courses  in  the  feast, 
long  ago,  and  the  only  chance  for  new  retouchings 


1 88  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

of  the  subject  comes  in  the  changes  that  the  passing 
years  bring  over  the  nocturnal  scene  there  in  Lutetia. 
The  records  of  Henri  Murger,  of  Du  Maurier  and 
of  Aristide  Bruant,  if  we  name  no  others,  declare 
the  glitter  of  the  nightly  pleasure  in  the  City  of  Light. 
The  name  of  Aristide  Bruant  recalls,  of  course,  one 
of  the  first  of  those  nocturnal  cabarets,  now  so  com- 
mon, which  became  places  where  art  and  literature 
met  on  common  ground,  for  profit,  and  the  pleasing 
of  the  visiting  public. 

The  routes  across  the  map  of  Paris  night  life 
are  many.  To  take  them  all,  to  know  the  landmarks 
on  all  the  ways,  would  need  a  lifetime,  and  many 
lives  have  been  wasted  in  the  search.  You  have,  as 
even  in  dismal  London,  innumerable  places  where  to 
dine,  innumerable  playhouses.  Then  come  the  many 
places  where  a  sort  of  bridge  is  formed  between 
theatrical  entertainment  and  nocturnal  gayety,  places 
the  names  of  which  are  by  now  so  familiar  in  New 
York  that  they  are  more  and  more  supposed  to  bring 
profit  through  domestic  application:  The  Folies 
Bergeres,  the  Jardin  de  Paris,  the  Alcazar  d'Ete,  the 
Ambassadeurs,  and  the  Marigny.  Some  of  these  are, 
for  summer,  partly  outdoors;  some,  like  the 
Marigny,  are  always  inclosed.  There  is  always  the 
show  on  the  stage,  and  the  show  in  the  promenade. 
Beauty  of  face,  of  form  and  of  frocks  and  frills  is 
likely  to  distract  from  the  actual  stage  the  attention 
of  the  non-linguistic  visitor. 

Morals  we  may  leave  to  moralists;  our  concern  is, 
now,  merely  to  observe  whether  the  obvious  features 
of  Paris  by  night  are  attractive.  We  have  already 
seen  how  the  legend  of  Maxim  has  paled;  that  is  true 


BERLIN,    NEWEST    OF    CITIES      189 

of  many  similar  Parisian  legends,  yet  we  would  be 
indeed  curmudgeon,  indeed  bilious  of  view,  if  we  dis- 
puted altogether  the  nocturnal  charm  of  Paris.  She 
is  light,  airy,  well  caparisoned,  amusing,  pleasurable 
to  the  eye  and  ear.  She  sparkles. 

When  the  great  establishments  that  pretend  to  a 
more  or  less  theatrical  entertainment  on  or  near  the 
grand  boulevards  empty  their  throngs  upon  the  night, 
the  business  of  nocturnal  pleasure  has,  if  you  know 
where  to  go,  only  begun  for  Paris.  But,  mark  you, 
you  must  know  where  to  go.  On  the  boulevards 
themselves  a  hush  and  a  dimness  may  come ;  you  may 
think  all  Paris  is  going  to  bed.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
it  has  gone  up  to  the  Hill  of  Martyrs,  to  the  Place 
Pigalle,  the  Place  Blanche,  or  even  higher  up,  to 
where  once  was  the  old  mill  and  where  the  studios 
were.  You  may  walk  if  you  have  youth  in  your 
veins,  or  you  may  just  say  the  right  word  to  a  cab- 
man, and  presently  you  will  be  where  night  never  dies 
in  Paris. 

The  names  change  from  year  to  year;  but  most 
folk  know  the  Rat  Mort,  where  -you  may  dine  (not 
badly,  as  I  remarked  in  my  chapter  on  Paris)  amid 
peaceable  appearing  burgesses  on  the  street  floor, 
and  later,  on  an  upper  floor,  find  all  manner  of 
mixed  and  fascinating  dancing  going  on  between 
the  cataracts  of  champagne  or  tisane;  most  know 
the  Abbaye,  with  its  mirrors,  its  overdressed 
women;  its  paid  dancers,  and  its  supercilious  servi- 
tors ;  and  most  have  been  to  the  Moulin  Rouge  either 
when  it  was  sheerly  a  dance  hall  or  when  it  was  ,i 
music  hall,  or  when,  as  lately,  it  is  a  cross  between 
the  two. 


190  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

Then  there  are  numerous  cabarets,  all  based  upon 
the  idea  of  Bruant,  or  of  the  Cafe  Noir  of  Rodolphe 
Sails.  There  is  the  place  called  Heaven,  and  that 
called  Hell,  and  that  of  Death.  To  astonish  you, 
to  give  you  a  sensation,  to  quicken  into  some  sort  of 
action  your  jaded  nocturnal  nerves,  is  the  object  of 
all  these  places. 

In  one  they  used  to  shout  an  obscene  word  at 
you  as  you  entered;  if  that  had  never  happened 
to  you  in  your  life  before,  you  were  at  least  the 
richer  for  a  sensation,  however  unspeakable  your 
opinion  of  the  welcome  might  be.  In  this  place 
artists  of  the  stage,  of  paint,  of  music,  or  of  letters 
conspired  to  your  amusement ;  in  another,  you  your- 
self might  be  dragged  into  doing  something  for  the 
amusement  of  the  others.  You  never  quite  knew 
what  might  befall  you,  as  long,  at  any  rate,  as  you 
kept  your  youth  and  your  enthusiasm. 

Is  it  that  we  grow  old,  or  do  the  joys  themselves 
grow  stale?  Or  does  Paris  indeed  not  keep  to  her 
old  pace  of  providing  nocturnal  novelties?  For,  to 
tell  the  honest  truth,  the  route  of  night  life  in  Paris 
is  to-day  a  trifle  littered  and  shabby,  like  the  streets 
of  Paris  herself.  The  taint  of  the  tourist  is  a  little 
too  plain  upon  it  all.  New  places  come  and  go,  but 
pass  quickly  into  the  familiar  repertoire  of  every 
sightseer,  until  all  are  finally  equally  nauseous  to  the 
discriminating. 

The  several  phases  of  this  nocturnal  gayety  begin 
to  wear  the  air  of  a  set  scene  upon  a  stage.  You 
almost  expect  to  hear  some  announcement  for  all 
the  world  to : 


BERLIN,    NEWEST    OF    CITIES     191 

uWalk  up,  walk  up,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  and  see 
how  gay  Paris  is  at  night." 

The  moment  this  label  becomes  too  plain,  the  thing 
itself  is  off.  Yet  Paris,  however  dingy  she  may  be- 
come as  a  mistress  of  pleasure,  still  keeps  the  quick- 
ness of  her  wits,  and  one  thinks  that  the  near  ex- 
ample of  Berlin  will  serve  to  show  her  the  horror  of 
too  garishly  displaying  nocturnal  life  as  a  tangible 
article  for  the  world's  desire.  For,  in  Berlin — but 
we  go  a  trifle  fast.  No  last  word  has  yet  been  said  of 
night  life  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Seine. 

Much  of  the  legend  and  the  literature  has  now  to 
be  forgotten.  Fickle  in  this  respect  as  in  all  else, 
Paris  is  forever  changing  the  fashion  in  cafes  and 
restaurants.  One  year  the  students  went  here,  the 
actors  there,  the  journalists  there;  if  you  came  the 
next  year  to  seek  any  of  them  in  those  places  you 
would  find  another  set  entirely. 

Then,  too,  there  is  that  frightfully  abused  term, 
still  overmuch  in  vogue  with  the  ignorant — the  Latin 
quarter.  There  has  been  no  such  thing,  outside  the 
literature  produced  in  English  by  the  uninitiate,  for, 
lo,  these  many  years.  There  is,  instead,  the  Ameri- 
can quarter,  and  the  Students'  quarter.  The  line 
between  the  two  may  be  something  like  the  equator; 
it  is  enough  to  say  that  the  American  quarter  lies  up 
near  the  Montparnasse  station,  and  the  Students' 
over  to  the  left,  as  you  turn  your  back  to  the  river. 
Ascending  the  rise  along  the  Boulevard  St.  Michel 
you  are  traveling  steadily  along  the  ways  worn  ro- 
mantic by  the  legends  of  the  Latin  quarter;  to-day 
it  is  the  quarter  of  the  students.  You  pass  famous 
resort  after  resort,  the  Golden  Sun,  the  Francis  the 


1 92  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

First,  the  Scarlet  Jackass,  the  Pantheon;  you  pass 
the  gardens  of  the  Luxembourg,  and  you  reach  the 
Bal  Bullier.  Not  to-day  what  once  it  was,  the  Bal 
Bullier,  even  as,  on  Montmartre,  the  Tabarin,  is  too 
staged  and  arranged  an  affair.  Yet — if  you  are 
young.  .  .  .  To  dance  into  the  small  hours  with 
the  first  best  or  worst  girl  whose  step  suits  yours ;  to 
warm  the  corner  of  the  cafe  where  once  Verlaine 
drooled  absinthe  and  rhymes;  to  watch  the  dawn 
come  glimmering  into  the  leafage  of  the  Luxem- 
bourg, to  catch  the  scent  of  night  mists,  of  the  Seine, 
of  tar,  of  dust,  that  go  to  make  the  Paris  essence;  to 
begin  with  a  cup  of  chocolate  at  the  Cafe  du  Dom,  to 
feast  one's  senses  on  lights,  and  music,  and  genius 
and  woman  the  whole  night  long,  and  then  go,  in 
the  proper  Paris  fashion,  and  break  one's  fast  in  a 
creamery  the  size  of  your  hat — that  is  to  have  been 
young. 

To  each  of  us,  so  we  have  arranged  our  lives  prop- 
erly, Paris  must  eternally  spell  a  part  of  youth.  Hag- 
gard and  wan  herself,  often  enough,  letting  herself 
get  unkempt  here  and  ragged  there,  she  yet  succeeds, 
in  spite  of  everything,  in  reviving  a  sense  of  youth  in 
all  the  world  that  visits  her.  We  must  be  very  tired, 
be  very  captious,  if  we  deny  her  charm,  or  find  it 
gone.  Yet,  that  even  in  our  time  a  change  has  come 
over  her  charm,  that  to-day  it  takes  more  determina- 
tion to  find  it  and  to  exert  it,  there  can  be  little  deny- 
ing. You  hear  this  spoken  wherever  cosmopolitans 
assemble.  Philosophers  of  pleasure  have  phrased  it 
thus :  that  Paris  must  sink  even  lower  than  she  has 
sunk  to-day  before  she  will  rise  again  to  the  splendid 
gayety  of  her  empire  days. 


BERLIN,    NEWEST    OF    CITIES     193 

MEANWHILE,  for  those  who  look  for  the  plain 
label  "Night  Life  Warranted  Gay,"  there  is  no  doubt 
that  the  most  important  place  has  long  since  ceased 
to  be  Paris.  Berlin  is  the  place. 

Such  night  life  has  never  before  existed  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  world.  Never  before  have  such  determi- 
nation and  fervor  gone  to  the  making  of  it,  such 
grossness  of  appetite  gone  to  the  enjoyment  of  it. 
In  preparing  nocturnal  pleasure  and  in  wallowing  in 
it  the  Berliners  are  unsurpassed.  They  made  up 
their  minds,  some  years  ago,  that  they  would  make 
their  town  the  capital  of  pleasure  for  the  whole 
world,  and,  by  the  almighty  dollar  and  the  lettering 
on  the  package,  they  have  done  it !  None  could  mis- 
take this  tremendous  activity,  this  feverish  hurrying 
and  plunging  into  whirlwinds  of  change,  of  color, 
of  splendor,  and  luxury;  this  is  Pleasure,  Pleasure; 
this  is  Night  Life.  One  wonders  that,  like  every- 
thing else  in  Berlin,  night  life  has  not  been  turned 
into  a  G.  M.  B.  H. — a  limited  liability  company. 

Let  us  approach  this  extraordinary  manifestation 
of  German  energy  soberly,  and  with  some  attempt 
at  beginning  at  a  beginning.  The  stories  of  nocturnal 
gayety,  as  they  touch  the  other  towns,  have  mostly 
been  told  before;  the  story  of  Berlin's  night  life,  the 
most  amazing  tale  of  all,  has  never  yet  been  properly 
told.  This  present  historian  has  seen  it  begin  out  of 
nothing.  For  some  years  after  '71  Berlin  was 
merely  the  capital  of  Prussia,  trying  to  assume  im- 
perial dignity.  There  came  material  prosperity. 
Germany  grew  rich.  The  same  change  that  came 
over  its  letters,  bringing  them  up  into  the  most  mod- 
ern directions  in  the  late  '903,  came  also  over  Berlin's 


194  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

appetite  for  amusement.  In  its  heavy-handed  man- 
ner it  determined  to  be  frivolous.  The  hours  for 
lights,  for  music,  for  the  semblance  of  liveliness  grew 
later  and  later,  earlier  and  earlier.  The  change  in 
the  last  five  or  six  years  has  come  at  a  pace  astonish- 
ing even  those  to  whom  the  town  was  as  familiar  as 
their  own  house. 

Time  was  when  the  Cafe  National,  on  the  Fried- 
richstrasse,  represented  the  culmination  of  deviltry 
that  Berlin  could  show  in  the  class  of  the  Cafe  du 
Pantheon  on  the  Boulevard  St.  Michel.  To-day  the 
National  is  a  dingy  affair  that  none  but  the  returning 
ghosts  of  other  decades,  or  the  Lost  Soul  of  Mar- 
garethe  Boehme  would  think  of  entering.  Berlin  is 
now  on  heights  of  luxury  the  National  had  never 
dared  to  attempt. 

Even  six  or  seven  years  ago  it  was  easily  possible 
to  spend  a  full  night  in  Berlin  without  being  bored. 
The  hours  for  the  play  were  early;  you  supped  after- 
wards at  Dressel's,  or  Kempinski's,  or  the  Traube, 
or  even  Frederich's  on  the  Potsdamerstrasse,  and 
then  you  went  to  a  cabaret.  There  were  plenty  of 
them,  started  in  imitation  of  the  French  article,  but 
eventually  having  some  decent  reason  for  existence 
in  that  they  furthered  a  domestic  art  of  music,  of 
poetry,  of  the  stage,  and  even  of  pantomime.  You 
heard  parodies  of  local  application,  burlesques,  songs 
and  stories  somewhat  near  the  bone,  and  music  that 
was  quite  as  worth  memory  as  what  you  heard  in  the 
first-ranking  theaters.  Indeed,  men  like  Oscar 
Straus,  Victor  Hollander,  Paul  Lincke,  and  others 
wrote  countless  cabaret  songs;  the  cabaret  helped 
them  to  their  later  operetta  fame. 


BERLIN,    NEWEST    OF   CITIES     195 

The  hours  of  the  cabaret  were  announced  as  from 
1 1  until  dawn.  Only  a  few  years  ago  a  popular  farce 
in  Berlin,  based  upon  the  cabaret  mania,  was  called 
"  'Till  Five  o'Clock  in  the  Morning."  You  could  go 
from  one  cabaret  to  another,  always  finding  different 
artists,  and  a  different,  individual  style  to  the  estab- 
lishment; the  London  trick  of  an  artist  "doing  a 
turn"  in  half  a  dozen  establishments  a  night  was  not 
in  vogue.  The  names  of  the  cabarets  were  such  as 
"The  Hurdy-gurdy."  the  "Roland  von  Berlin,"  'The 
Bad  Boy,"  and  the  like.  They  had  their  ups  and 
downs;  you  found  different  ones  each  year;  but  the 
idea  of  the  thing  itself  did  not  die  down.  It  bridged 
effectively  that  period  of  hours  between  supper  and 
the  dawn,  and  the  Berliner  had  determined  this  pe- 
riod must  not  be  wasted  in  sleep. 

TO-DAY  there  are  places  in  Berlin  which  surpass 
anything  ever  before  attempted  in  the  history  of  pub- 
lic pleasure.  They  call  themselves  dance  palaces, 
using  the  French  form  for  the  label.  The  Parisian 
model  for  pleasure  still  serves  the  Berliner;  the 
Parisian  legend  of  nocturnal  pleasure  still  has  its 
power,  but  in  the  material  evidences  Berlin  has  long 
since  surpassed  Paris.  One  of  these  Palais  de  Danse 
will  suffice,  in  description,  for  our  purpose. 

You  enter  past  as  many  flunkies  as  in  an  actual 
palace;  you  pay  an  entrance  fee,  if  you  are  male,  by 
no  means  small.  As  for  the  ladies — let  us  be  polite, 
even  in  Berlin,  where  politeness  is  eccentric ! — the 
ladies  find  it  profitable  to  subscribe  to  a  season  ticket. 
You  proceed  up  stairs  and  halls  that  are  marble  and 
gold  and  everything  that  glitters  and  blazes,  until 


196  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

you  find  yourself,  eventually,  in  a  vast  hall  the  like 
of  which  has  not  been  found  since  Babylon.  Vast 
is  the  floor  space,  vast  the  height  of  the  room,  and 
stupendous  the  garishness  of  splendor  about  you 
everywhere.  Nowhere  an  artistic  style,  but  every- 
where a  solid,  colossal  fever  to  impress.  It  is  the 
splendor  of  drunkards.  Drunkards  drunk  with  their 
own  prosperity,  mad  to  shout  that  prosperity  at  the 
world.  Golden  nymphs  and  cherubs  reel  about  the 
ceiling;  thousands  of  lights  produce  an  intense  glare; 
jewels  and  wine  shimmer  and  sparkle  all  about  you. 

Upon  a  depressed  portion  of  the  floor  couples 
dance  to  the  oversensuous  music.  Watching  the 
dancers  sit  the  others,  men  and  women,  at  countless 
tables,  small  and  large.  Champagne  pops  every- 
where; the  "wine  openers"  of  Broadway,  watching 
this  Berlin  scene,  would  suddenly  realize  their  own 
inefficiencies.  Always,  too,  it  is  a  French  champagne 
that  you  see;  the  Berliner,  in  this  sort  of  resort  at 
least,  is  as  cowardly  about  ordering  his  domestic  fizz 
as  is  the  American.  The  point  of  the  whole  business 
of  nocturnal  pleasure  in  Berlin  is  that  there  must  be 
more  money  spent  than  has  ever  before  been  spent 
on  nocturnal  pleasure  in  the  whole  world. 

Everything  is  there  that  money  can  buy,  more  than 
you  ever  thought  possible.  Every  material  form  of 
display  and  luxuriousness  greets  the  eye,  on  the  floor, 
the  walls,  and  the  ceiling.  The  women's  frocks  cost 
fortunes;  the  men  are  spending  fortunes.  Withal, 
the  women  could  fascinate  no  refined  taste,  and  the 
men  would  be  tolerated  for  not  one  second  by  any 
finely  constituted  woman.  They  move,  dancing, 
drinking,  and  eating,  amid  all  this  Babylonian  splen- 


BERLIN,    NEWEST    OF    CITIES      197 

dor;  the  men  in  the  semblance  of  butchers,  the  women 
patterned  for  cooks. 

The  rings  on  the  men's  hands,  the  Parisian  robes 
on  the  women,  do  not  hide  the  essential  ugliness  in 
them.  After  all,  there  are  some  things  you  cannot 
buy.  Here,  we  must  confess,  is  the  supreme  triumph 
of  materialism  in  our  own  time,  of  materialism  seek- 
ing pleasure.  Had  Babylon  been  banal,  it  must  have 
been  like  the  Berlin  of  to-day;  let  us  keep  our  legend 
and  believe  that  Babylon  had  never  a  megalomania 
that  robbed  it  of  good  taste. 

Berlin,  for  all  the  hours  from  dusk  to  dawn,  shows 
the  teeth  of  its  grim  determination  to  be  gay.  It  has 
laid  on  luxury  with  a  trowel,  first  in  this  dancing 
palace,  then  another.  You  can  continue  from  one 
of  these  to  another,  until  the  sun  is  high  hung  in 
heaven.  You  will  see  the  same  people;  they,  too,  are 
making  the  nocturnal  procession.  It  begins  to  grow 
sad,  this  route  of  pleasure ;  you  see  the  perverted  men 
who  can  no  longer  achieve  pleasure  though  they 
nightly  spend  a  fortune  on  it,  and  the  women  who 
play  the  bitter  part  of  unrewarded  players  in  the 
comedy  called  Night  Life. 

All  around  you  cafes  are  open;  even  if  some  close, 
the  bars,  English  or  American  so-called,  or  labeled 
Frenchwise,  Tabarin,  or  Maxim,  or  Hohenzollern, 
never  close  at  all.  Nor  is  this  confined  to  the  central 
region.  In  every  direction,  near  every  residential 
nucleus,  these  bars  and  all-night  resorts  flourish.  In 
some,  too,  even  the  dullest  observer  will  find  that 
pride  in  perversity  which  Berlin  no  longer  takes  the 
least  pains  to  dissemble. 

Berlin,   for  garishness  of  its  night  life,   for  the 


198  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

amount  of  money  spent,  has  surpassed  the  world. 
There  is  nothing  like  it  anywhere,  nor  has  there  been 
in  our  time.  To  the  Metropole  Palais  de  Danse, 
in  Berlin,  Maxim's  of  Paris  is  like  a  dull  and  dingy 
hole  in  the  wall,  and  Giro's  at  Monte  like  a  petty 
beanery.  Like  the  feverish  zest  of  the  Berliner  to 
surpass  the  modern  records  of  nocturnal  gayety  we 
have  seen  nothing  in  our  time.  And,  in  contradis- 
tinction to  the  business  of  pleasure  in  most  other 
towns,  certainly  in  Paris  and  in  New  York,  the  Ber- 
liners  themselves  play  the  leading  parts;  the  night 
life  is  not  simply  an  enterprise  conducted  for  the 
amusement  of  Russian  grand  dukes,  rich  Americans, 
or  gentlemen  from  Oskaloosa.  No,  Berlin  does  most 
of  it  herself;  she  has  determined  to  lead,  and  she  does 
it,  not  only  in  providing  the  place  and  the  suitable 
surroundings,  but  the  leading  participants. 

Yet  the  irony  of  things  has  ordained  that  for  all 
his  energy,  all  his  money,  the  real  article  of  pleas- 
ure shall  not  come  to  the  Berliner's  lure.  He  gives 
one  of  the  most  imposing  imitations  in  the  world, 
and  one,  doubtless,  likely  to  impress  all  save  the 
very  finest  temperaments.  The  average  American, 
applying  his  familiar  standard  of  money  spent,  of 
obvious  splendor  achieved,  may  not  miss  the  beauty 
that  is  not  there,  the  intangible  charm  that  has  been 
utterly  destroyed  by  all  this  patent  pursuit  of 
pleasure. 

He  will  simply  see  that  nothing  on  Broadway, 
nothing  in  Saratoga,  neither  Chamberlin's  in 
Washington  nor  Canfield's,  neither  this  million- 
aire establishment  nor  that,  was  ever  like  the  places 


BERLIN,    NEWEST    OF    CITIES      199 

he  will  see  in  Berlin.  "Rome — on  a  drunk !"  said  a 
genial  critic  once  of  the  Chicago  Court  House  and 
its  architecture.  The  phrase  were  better  applied 
to  the  interior  architecture  of  some  of  Berlin's  noc- 
turnal palaces. 

Berlin's  Chief  of  Police  who,  as  I  have  already 
recorded,  did  not  know  the  identity  of  Tilla  Durieux, 
presumably  also  knows  nothing  of  the  night  life  of 
Berlin,  otherwise  fairly  famous  in  the  world.  If 
he  did,  he  might  have  found  it  as  important  to  check 
certain  tendencies  in  that  night  life  recalling  the 
Round  Table  and  Eulenberg,  and  the  Harden  case, 
as  to  censor  pages  appealing  only  to  men  of  letters. 

But  perhaps  there  is  an  admitted  policy  of  empire 
in  all  this.  Perhaps  the  supreme  night  life  of  Ber- 
lin is  to  make  evident  to  the  world  at  large  the  com- 
mercial supremacy  of  Germany.  However  that  may 
be,  it  is  a  fact  that  Germany  is  living  fully  up  to  its 
means,  is  as  reckless  in  riotous  living,  as  avid  to 
spend  more  than  its  neighbors,  as  ever  Americans 
have  been  accused  of  being. 

Berlin  has  all  the  externals.  It  is  useless  to  deny 
that.  Its  conduct  of  the  material  business  of  a  gay 
night  life  is  unrivaled;  the  thing  is  a  paying  con- 
cern. The  world  at  large,  after  all,  is  impressed 
by  material  evidences;  Berlin  has  more  and  greater 
evidences  of  nocturnal  gayety  than  any  other  mod- 
ern capital.  Yet  there  are  so  many  different  sorts 
of  people  in  the  world!  Some,  for  example,  find  the 
thing  itself,  gayety,  pleasure,  whatever  others  may 
choose  to  label  it,  in  circumstances  where  labels,  ma- 
terial evidences,  suitable  surroundings,  etc.,  are  ut- 


200  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

terly  lacking.  There  are,  will  you  believe  it,  after 
you  have  read  of  the  brilliance  of  Berlin  by  night, 
people  who  find  their  gayety  in  Vienna ! 

YES,  in  the  ancient  Kaiserstadt,  the  old,  last 
citadel  of  aristocracy  and  feudalism  in  the  Western 
World,  some  find  an  air,  an  atmosphere,  intangible 
like  an  escaping  melody,  that  holds  for  them  the 
thing  that  men  call  pleasure.  An  insuperable  diffi- 
culty confronts  whoever  would  describe  the  Viennese 
article  of  night  life;  since  it  is  largely  atmospheric, 
an  affair  of  the  emotions,  of  the  tastes.  To  declare 
that  there  are  innumerable  cafes  that  keep  open  to 
the  small  hours ;  to  say  that  the  central  part  of  town 
dies  early  into  darkness  and  silence,  to  record  the 
names  of  the  cabarets,  the  Hell,  the  Heaven,  the 
Fledermaus,  the  Siisse  Madel,  the  Max  &  Moritz — 
all  this  is  but  to  utter  the  inessential  names  of  things 
and  to  give  no  hint  of  the  heart  of  the  matter.  Like 
culture,  this  is  an  affair  of  the  emotions,  an  effect 
not  material,  not  tangible,  not  to  be  labeled,  atmos- 
pheric. 

It  is  futile  to  list  the  places  you  may  go  to  at  night 
in  Vienna;  no  listing  gives  away  the  secret  of  its 
charm.  Just  so  is  it  futile  for  me  to  try  to  spell  that 
charm  for  you.  What  mortal  yet,  in  any  art,  save 
that  of  personality,  gave  charm  a  voice  or  form? 
No,  a  list  will  tell  us  nothing  adequate.  We  may 
point  out  that  it  is  possible  to  go  to  the  Burg  Thea- 
ter, or  the  Opera  itself,  or  to  the  Theater  des  Wes- 
tens;  to  go  to  the  Cabaret  of  the  Hoelle,  where  as 
good  a  playwright  as  Ludwig  Thoma  is  occasionally 
represented  by  one-act  sketches ;  or  to  a  huge  variety 


BERLIN,    NEWEST    OF    CITIES     201 

house  like  Ronacher's,  or  to  the  Apollo  to  hear  Roda- 
Roda  tell  his  inimitable  stories.  There,  in  the  Roda- 
Roda  number,  or  if  Frank  Wedekind  is  mumming 
something  of  his  own,  we  gain  an  experience  not 
possible  often  or  in  many  places,  for  Roda-Roda  is 
playwright  and  humorist  of  the  first  rank,  author  of 
the  most  successful  farce  in  years,  "Feldherrn- 
huegel,"  forbidden  in  Austria  on  account  of  its  satire 
on  the  Austrian  army.  Wedekind  is  now  of  world- 
wide notoriety.  We  have  no  English  or  American 
equivalents  to  such  distinguished  men  of  letters  and 
the  drama  appearing  before  the  huge  audiences  of 
music-halls.  Or,  again,  we  may  hear  at  the  Max  & 
Moritz  a  tender  ballad  of  that  fine  dead  poet,  von 
Liliencron,  a  ballad  called  "Muede,"  recalling  the 
days  when  the  Ueberbrettl  was  young  in  German 
lands.  Strolling  down  the  Hoheturmstrasse,  on  to 
the  Pragerstrasse,  you  will  find  lesser  resorts,  dingier 
people,  less  presentable  pleasures.  But  the  essential 
pleasurable  Viennese  charm,  how  will  you  encompass 
that? 

You  will  do  it  exactly  as  a  gunpowder  expert  the 
other  day  put  his  five-hundred-fingered  hand  upon 
Poetry  in  trying  to  describe  what  it  was.  You  will 
do  it  just  as  a  child  catches  a  butterfly  that  it  may 
win  its  gorgeous  hues,  which  perish  as  they  are 
brushed  by  the  finger.  Night  life  in  Vienna  has  the 
quality  of  all  Viennese  life,  it  has  a  curious  twilight 
of  sentiment  and  charm  that  some  few  artists,  not- 
ably Schnitzler,  have  put  into  words,  but  for  trans- 
lation into  an  alien  tongue,  for  alien  comprehension, 
it  presents  difficulties  too  great  to  be  overcome  here. 
Old,  established  on  long  outmoded,  useless  feudal 


202  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

things,  Vienna  still  holds  for  beauty  in  its  life,  its 
women,  its  externals,  a  peerless  place  in  the  world. 
To  describe  the  charm  of  its  night  life  is  to  describe 
the  charm  of  a  beautiful  woman,  the  fascination  of  an 
affair  with  a  charming  damsel — the  Siisse  Madel 
immortalized  by  more  than  one  Viennese  song  and 
story. 

i 

To  be  young,  and  in  Paris;  to  be  sentimental,  and 
in  Vienna;  to  enjoy  the  sight  of  money  spent,  and  in 
Berlin ;  to  be  dog  tired  and  go  to  bed,  in  London — 
there  are  some  sorts  of  night  life  abroad  for  you. 


CHAPTER    EIGHT 

LONDON 

PARIS  for  the  gourmet,  Berlin  for  the  roys- 
terer,  London  for  the  man  of  fashion;  so 
runs  our  cosmopolitan  summing-up.  If 
time  and  again  we  have  denied  London's 
title  as  a  capital  of  good  cooking  or  nocturnal  gayety, 
it  is  time.,  in  all  fairness,  that  we  examined  that  in 
which  she  still  excels.  From  the  vantage  ground  of 
Bond  Street  and  Hyde  Park  let  us  observe  London 
and  its  habits;  let  us  even  look  on  at  so  typically 
British  an  event  as  a  prizefight  held,  so  that  we  may 
not  narrow  our  vision  over  precincts  too  fashionable, 
in  the  heart  of  Whitechapel;  let  us  see  what  can  be 
done  to  escape  a  London  Sunday,  and  to  distinguish 
England  speech  from  American.  By  then,  without 
having  infringed  at  any  point  upon  the  patents  of  all 
the  Baedekers,  without  having  moved  constantly  in  a 
procession  of  sightseers,  we  may  have  gained  as  inti- 
mate an  understanding  of  the  greatest  of  English 
towns  as  others  acquire  by  looking  at  the  Tower  of 
London  and  peering  into  Dickens-land. 


BOND    STREET   AND   ITS    HABITS 

IF  we  arc  to  credit  streets  and  avenues  with  char- 
acters of  their  own,  with  moods,  some  of  them  freak- 
ish and  some  of  them  typical,  then  the  distinguishing 

203 


204  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

characteristic  of  Bond  Street,  as  of  our  own  Fifth 
Avenue,  is  its  quality  as  a  thoroughfare  for  fashion. 

Like  the  world  itself,  streets  are  what  we  make 
them.  The  philosophy  of  Schopenhauer  may  easily 
be  otherwise  phrased  by  saying  that  everything  de- 
pends upon  the  beholder.  There  are  doubtless  peo- 
ple who  consider  Fifth  Avenue  merely  as  so  much 
real  estate,  or  Bond  Street  as  so  much  history.  Those 
considerations  would  doubtless  be  valuable  enough; 
but  it  is  as  fashionable  thoroughfares  that  these  two 
arteries  of  London  and  of  New  York  make  their 
paramount  appeal  to  the  general. 

If  you  will  observe  Bond  Street  or  Fifth  Avenue 
long  enough  and  carefully  enough,  you  will  see  all 
the  people  who  are  worth  seeing  in  our  Western 
world.  As  has  been  said  often  enough  of  this  or 
that  corner  in  Paris.  You  will  see  the  fashionables 
and  you  will  see  the  fashions.  These  latter,  as  to 
the  cut  of  the  clothes  and  the  individuals  within 
them,  may  change;  just  as  the  sand  particles  in  one 
corner  of  Sahara  may  not  be  the  identical  ones  to- 
day that  they  were  yesterday;  but  the  fashionable 
procession  continues  eternally,  issuing  from  the 
earliest  of  our  recollections  and  pointing  into  a 
changeless  future. 

Though  your  philosophy  be  merely  that  of  man 
or  woman  of  the  world,  calculating  only  the  imme- 
diate and  the  intimate,  without  any  thoughts  of  ab- 
stract or  altruistic  doctrine,  to  watch  the  Bond  Street 
parade,  upon  a  day  of  Springtime,  or  of  St.  Luke's 
summer,  is  one  of  the  most  diverting  of  pastimes. 

JOHNSON  asked  us  to  walk  with  him  in  Fleet 


LONDON  205 

Street;  and  a  pleasant  legend  shows  Beau  Brummel 
condescending  to  stroll  with  us  down  the  Mall.  Shall 
we,  then,  translate  those  two  eminent  personages 
into  the  twentieth  century,  and  take  a  stroll  down 
Bond  Street  together? 

Let  us  suppose  ourselves  to  have  entered  Bond 
Street  from  Piccadilly.  If  we  are  of  one  persuasion 
we  may  just  have  rounded  Stewart's  most  dangerous 
corner,  where  tea  and  muffins  lure  the  unwary  male; 
if  we  are  of  a  cannier  breed  we  will  be  blind  to  every- 
thing but  a  passing  bit  of  gossip  about  Scott,  the  hat- 
ter, on  the  other  corner,  and  how  his  daughters  have 
married.  From  thence,  strolling  slowly  westward, 
those  who  know  their  Bond  Street  will  find  many 
stopping  places.  One  art  gallery  after  another. 
Yonder  are  the  galleries  of  the  Wertheimers,  whose 
family  the  American  painter  Sargent  helped  to  make 
conspicuous,  or  who  served  to  make  Sargent  famous 
— you  may  put  the  case  as  you  please.  Here  are 
galleries  where  occasionally  you  may  see  the  cari- 
catures of  Max  Beerbohm,  depicting  renowned  per- 
sonages of  the  day;  and  where,  now  and  again,  the 
caricatures  by  Spy  of  Vanity  Fair  may  be  seen. 

THESE  latter  are  of  value  to  our  present  subject; 
they  are  sartorial  as  well  as  satiric;  and  persons  with 
leisure  to  make  a  study  of  masculine  apparel  in  Eng- 
land will  find  it  worth  while  to  observe  not  only  the 
actual  street  pageant,  but  these  extremely  instructive 
character  and  costume  portraits.  The  subjects  of 
"Spy"  colored  sketches  have  been  all  the  men  of 
social,  sporting,  political,  military  and  even  clerical 
importance  of  the  time.  To  such  an  extent  has  this 


206  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

fact  been  appreciated  the  world  over  that  some 
American  tailors  have  been  in  the  habit  of  placing 
"Spy"  sketches  in  their  windows  from  time  to  time. 
Quite  aside  from  the  study  you  may  thus  make  of 
the  essence  of  good  dress  in  England,  this  gallery  of 
portraits  is  vastly  useful  to  the  stranger,  inasmuch 
as  it  forms  a  quick  key  to  the  identity  of  the  many 
notabilities  he  sees  daily.  Hardly  any  great  Briton 
is  excluded  from  the  gallery.  Among  its  best  dressed 
men,  by  American  standards,  have  been  Colonel 
Lawrence  James  Oliphant,  Mr.  Alfred  Harmsworth 
and  Mr.  George  Alexander;  the  last  as  Aubrey  Tan- 
queray.  The  actor  wore  a  blue  lounge  suit,  button 
boots  and  a  blue  ascot  tie,  faintly  dotted  with  red. 
Among  the  frock-coated  gentry,  one  recent  season, 
was  Prince  Francis  of  Teck,  whose  coat  was  buttoned 
very  tight  to  the  ngure  in  a  fashion  now  much 
seen  both  in  frocks  and  cutaways.  His  silk  hat  was 
tilted  back  at  an  angle  that  in  any  less  exalted  per- 
sonage would  proclaim  the  bounder.  "Spy's"  por- 
trait of  the  Earl  of  Clarendon,  then  Lord  Chamber- 
lain, showed  him  in  a  cutaway,  black  ascot,  wing  col- 
lar, yellow  wash-leather  gloves  and  a  violet  bouton- 
niere.  In  the  tying  of  a  four-in-hand  some  English- 
men seem  to  fancy  a  very  ugly  type  of  carelessness. 
Witness  the  portrait  of  Viscount  Valentia,  of  Ox- 
ford, in  the  Vanity  Fair  gallery.  His  red  four-in- 
hand  was  so  loosely  knotted  that  the  collar  stud 
showed  plainly  between  it  and  the  collar.  Millions 
of  Englishmen  copy  this  hideous  sloppiness.  Vastly 
preferable  is  the  tropic  carelessness  affected  by  such 
a  man  as  Sir  Claude  Macdonald,  of  Chinese  fame. 
In  white  flannels,  with  a  Panama  hat  in  hand,  tall, 


LONDON  207 

lean  and  blond  of  mustache,  he  was  the  picture  of 
cool,  clean  comfort. 

Reflections  more  serious  than  sartorial  inevitably 
stir  at  sight  of  that  Bond  Street  gallery.  It  is  of 
certain  male  portraits  of  John  Sargent,  for  instance, 
that  I  always  think,  as  I  pass  this  Bond  Street  point; 
portraits  that  definitely  marked  him  as  a  painter  of 
men.  These  were  the  portraits  of  Lord  Ribblesdale 
and  of  young  Wertheimer.  As  life  stands  out  from 
cold  stone,  so  these  canvases  stood  out  from  those 
about  them.  They  marked  extremes,  not  only  of 
person,  but  of  type;  and  they  must  ever  remain 
notable  documents  in  the  history  of  those  vital 
changes  which  our  generation  has  seen  in  England. 
To  say  nothing  of  their  accentuating,  once  again 
(as  was  so  repeatedly  pointed  out  in  my  Munich 
chapter) ,  how  imperishable  is  the  artist's  commentary 
upon  his  own  time,  its  arts  and  its  personages. 

Here,  in  Lord  Ribblesdale,  was  the  old  aristocracy 
of  birth  and  breeding;  there,  in  young  Wertheimer, 
the  new  world-power,  brains  and  money.  At  all 
points  the  contrasts  were  absolute;  as  Lord  Ribbles- 
dale was  handsome  and  haughty,  Wertheimer  was 
handsome  and  haughty;  yet  a  world  lay  between  the 
two.  With  his  small  mouth,  fine  aquiline  nose,  thin 
face,  Lord  Ribblesdale  typified  the  British  peer  at 
his  best;  he  was  in  riding  togs,  and  the  Englishman 
is  always  at  his  best — indeed,  he  seems  perilously 
near  being  well-dressed  at  such  time  only — when 
dressed  for  outdoor  sports,  riding  or  driving  pre- 
ferred. Ribblesdale's  face  showed  pride,  careless 
consciousness  of  the  prestige  the  ages  have  put  to 
his  credit,  and  a  scorn  for  the  majority  opinion. 


208  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

Wertheimer's  showed  pride  also,  the  pride  of  money 
and  of  the  skill  that  shall  bring  others  to  worship 
such  power.  A  young  face,  dark,  with  slumberous 
eyes,  and  a  touch  of  sneer  in  it.  The  eyes  tell  of 
power  and  brain  and  cunning. 

As  studies  in  male  attire  these  two  pictures  of 
Ribblesdale  and  Wertheimer  tell  the  entire  story  of 
the  British  male's  dressing  of  to-day.  Wertheimer 
is  immaculate.  Too  much  so,  perhaps.  London 
holds  very  few  men  who  dress  so  well  as  this.  His 
coat  and  trousers  are  black,  the  coat  a  short,  or  sacque 
cut.  The  waistcoat  is  buff,  and  at  the  neck  is  a  white 
stock.  Mr.  Sargent  knew  what  he  was  about  when 
he  had  both  these  men  choose  the  sporting  attire. 
In  Wertheimer's  case  it  is  suggested  only  in  the 
stock;  Ribblesdale  is  in  full  riding  regalia.  Where 
the  fit  of  Wertheimer's  clothes  is  precise,  immaculate, 
Ribblesdale's  simply  hang  about  him.  The  clothes 
are  of  tan,  the  breeches  are  wrinkled  countlessly; 
the  two  lower  buttons  of  the  waistcoat  are  unbut- 
toned; a  large  black  stock  is  awry  and  under  the 
right  ear,  and  the  black  topcoat  drops  over  the 
shoulders  anyhow.  Ribblesdale  is  too  conscious  of 
himself  to  care  about  clothes,  or,  rather,  the  misfit 
of  them;  he  is  Ribblesdale,  a  riding  peer,  and  the 
lesser  man  may  be  immaculate  for  all  he  cares.  That 
is  what  Sargent  has  put  in  this  frame,  at  least.  Wert- 
heimer intends  that  his  clothes  shall  impress  as  much 
as  his  money  and  his  brain. 

These  two  Sargent  portraits,  of  such  opposite 
types  of  man,  are  triumphs;  they  tell  pregnant 
stones;  they  reveal  the  gist  of  an  epoch.  They 
signal  the  old  that  is  passing,  and  the  new  that  is  in 


LONDON  209 

power.  With  J.  C.  Snaith's  novel  "Broke  of  Cov- 
enden,"  and  with  Galsworthy's  "The  Country 
House"  and  "The  Patrician,"  these  Sargent  can- 
vases belong  in  the  history  of  the  Decline  and  Fall 
of  the  British  Squire. 

MOVING  on  up  Bond  Street,  away  from  Wert- 
heimer's,  on  the  right  comes  one  of  England's  most 
famous  perfumers,  and  just  around  the  corner  is  the 
Vigo  Street  entrance  to  the  Burlington  Arcade,  where 
you  may  see  some  of  the  newest  and  most  expensive 
of  the  fashionable  haberdashery  of  the  moment,  and 
where,  in  certain  afternoon  hours,  it  is  quite  impos- 
sible for  you,  even  if  you  are  an  American,  to  walk 
with  your  ladies.  On  the  left  you  have  passed  a 
smaller  arcade,  where  once  was  the  bookshop  of 
Leonard  Smithers,  who  came  into  history  as  having 
been  publisher  to  Oscar  Wilde. 

At  the  bend,  where  Bond  Street  is  narrowest,  and 
where,  if  you  are  afoot,  you  have  to  be  very  careful 
lest  milady's  carriage  throws  some  scornful  London 
mud  upon  your  clothes,  was  Long's  Hotel,  one  of  the 
places  where,  in  an  earlier  decade,  all  the  bloods,  as 
well  as  the  brains,  of  London  were  wont  to  look  in 
for  a  nip;  that  was  part  of  the  duty  they  felt  toward 
the  town  that  kept  them  alive  and  amused.  Not 
far  from  there  was  the  Blue  Posts  Tavern  in  Cork 
Street,  where,  until  just  the  other  day,  devotees  of 
the  grilled  bone  could  worship  and  be  satisfied. 

All  about  lies  tailorland.  If  all  else  were  stilled, 
if  the  carriages  and  motors  and  carts  fell  suddenly 
silent,  and  no  steps  resounded  on  the  pavements,  no 
voices  filled  the  air,  we  may  imagine  that  whole  re- 


2io  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

gion,  around  and  about  St.  George's,  Hanover 
Square,  from  Conduit  Street  to  Brook  Street,  sibilant 
with  the  snap  and  click  of  shears,  and  with  the  polite 
voices  asking,  "And  will  you  have  a  ticket  pocket  out- 
side?" Tailors,  tailors,  everywhere. 

For  ladies  there  are  plenty  of  alluring  places  here- 
about, we  know  well  enough;  all  the  great  French 
and  American  and  English  costumers  have  their 
places  somewhere  within  reach  of  this  radius;  yet 
some  of  these  are  but  agencies,  but  local  depots,  but 
filiales;  whereas  for  men  this  is  the  ultimate  sartorial 
Mecca.  It  is  a  large  question,  this,  of  the  supremacy 
of  the  Bond  Street  tailor,  or  the  Fifth  Avenue  tailor, 
and  will  never  be  settled  as  long  as  men's  tastes  dif- 
fer; but  it  is  not  to  be  disputed  that  nowhere  else  in 
the  world  is  there  so  solid  a  cluster  of  the  men  who 
make  our  outer  men.  They  cling  together,  as  if  feed- 
ing upon  the  very  air  of  competition  and  proximity. 

A  fashionable,  struck  suddenly  with  aphasia,  with 
loss  of  memory,  and  so  unable  to  recall  the  name  and 
number  of  his  proper  tailor,  need  not  suffer  so  long 
as  he  has  reached  this  region;  let  him  follow  his  nose, 
and  the  door  of  one  tailor  or  another  would  surely 
open  to  him. 

Bootmakers,  too,  plenty  of  them.  But  no  man 
of  common  sense  goes  near  them,  unless  he  is  an 
American  of  the  hopelessly  Anglomaniac  sort.  The 
famous  Parisian  maker  of  featherweight  trunks  is 
here,  and  the  drapers  who  display  genuine  Harris 
tweeds  in  their  windows,  whence  it  is  doubtful  if  any 
ever  issue  into  actual  suits  of  clothes.  A  few  doors 
up  Conduit  Street  is  one  of  the  well-known  Starting 
Price  bookmakers,  with  rooms  as  splendid  as  an 


LONDON  211 

uptown  stock  broker's  office  in  New  York;  nor  is 
this  the  only  point  at  which  these  differently  labeled 
enterprises  meet  in  the  human  scheme  of  things. 

And  so,  presently,  we  are  in  Oxford  Street,  with 
Marshall  &  Snelgrove's  facing  us,  and  the  newest 
of  all  the  London  department  stores,  Selfridge's, 
looming  up  just  to  the  left,  beckoning  all  Americans. 
There,  on  Oxford  Street,  is  stuff  for  all  purses,  all 
classes;  there  the  stream  is  that  of  all-inclusive  hu- 
manity; here,  on  Bond  Street,  at  this  particularly 
fashionable  hour,  the  stream  is  sheerly  aristocratic, 
and  when  rags  appear  there  we  feel  the  contrast  all 
the  more  shockedly.  Let  us,  for  our  present  pur- 
pose, turn  our  back  again  upon  the  greater  human 
flow,  and  consider  simply  the  thin  if  brilliant  lane 
of  fashion  that  ebbs  and  flows  through  Bond  Street. 

It  is  a  constant  procession  of  well-dressed  men 
and  women.  Those  who  are  not  well  dressed  are 
in  a  conspicuous  minority;  you  feel,  instinctively, 
that,  in  the  season  at  least,  it  is  an  insult  to  the  street 
and  to  yourself  not  to  be  well  dressed  on  Bond 
Street.  Occasionally  a  carriage  stops  by  the  curb, 
while  the  traffic  halts;  occupants  converse  languidly; 
sometimes  a  hat  is  lifted  from  the  tiny  trottoir; 
there  is  chatter  of  where  one  is  going  that  night,  or 
the  next.  "No;  we  are  off  to  Paris;  London  is  really 
too  dull  yet;  only  provincials  and  Americans  are  in 
town."  A  human  ruin  in  paint  and  powder,  crow's 
feet  and  a  wig,  is  saying  to  the  corsetted  beau  beside 
her,  with  a  tragic  attempt  at  coquetry,  "Ah,  it  was 
so  triste  after  you  went!"  Splendid  girls,  the  color 
of  Devonshire  cream  and  roses;  ponderous  dow- 
agers, impressive  with  lorgnettes  and  supercilious 


212  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

noses;  clean-shaven,  red-cheeked  men,  perfectly 
caparisoned — pass,  and  repass.  Constantly  people 
bow  and  speak  to  one  another;  all  London,  and  a 
good  deal  of  the  whole  Anglo-Saxon  world,  are  out 
walking  and  driving. 

The  horseflesh  is  superb ;  the  driving  is  no  better, 
perhaps,  than  on  Fifth  Avenue,  but  its  obstacles  are 
greater,  in  that  Bond  Street  is  not,  after  all,  much 
wider  than  Maiden  Lane,  and  yet  must  take  at  a 
certain  time  of  the  day  all  that  is  fashionable  in  Lon- 
don traffic.  One  may  laugh  as  one  likes  at  the  su- 
perhuman stiffness  of  the  grooms  and  the  coachmen 
in  Bond  Street;  after  one  has  seen  the  ludicrous 
mockeries  of  English  horsiness  that  obtain  in  most 
of  the  other  European  countries,  one  is  forced  to 
admire  both  the  calm,  immaculate  immobility  and 
the  skill  of  the  British  horsefolk.  The  carriages  of 
many  types  are  all  of  an  essential  solidity;  you  may 
see  some  American  runabouts  in  Hyde  Park,  but  not 
in  Bond  Street. 

TIME  was,  and  not  so  long  ago,  when  the  fash- 
ionable London  male,  who  looms  so  large  in  the  Bond 
Street  procession,  was  built  upon  what  seemed  a 
changeless  pattern.  High  silk  hat,  frock  coat — 
these  were  the  unalterables.  Trousers  might  run 
this  way  or  that,  toward  gay  or  grave ;  the  waistcoat 
might  betray  the  boldness  or  the  timidity  of  its 
wearer;  there  might,  or  there  might  not,  be  spats. 
Dead  of  winter  or  tropic  summer  made  no  differ- 
ence; the  Englishman  and  his  tall  hat  went  stolidly 
through  both.  Some  of  them  knew  their  folly,  yet 


LONDON  213 

it  seemed  too  deeply  rooted  for  change.  Andrew 
Lang,  while  still  the  period  was  Victorian,  wrote  of 
the  idiocy  of  man,  tall-hatted  and  frock-coated, 
sweating  through  the  summer  day  on  which  the  cow, 
more  sensible,  chose  some  cool  shady  pool  wherein 
to  stand  immersed. 

To  every  youngster  who  knew  London  in  that 
late  Victorian  day  the  town  seemed  filled  with  a  mil- 
lion sombre  digits  walking  unsmilingly  in  long  coats 
and  heavy  hats;  an  umbrella  made  the  only  occa- 
sional addition.  One  such  youngster,  mot  qui  parle, 
in  whose  schooltime  London  revealed  itself  only  as 
he  sat  in  a  fourwheeler  between  King's  Cross  Sta- 
tion and  London  Bridge  half  a  dozen  times  a  year, 
all  Londoners  seemed  to  have  been  born  in  frock 
coats;  and  if  he  thought  of  death  at  all,  he  would 
have  fancied  Londoners  as  frock-coated  in  the  Great 
Beyond.  Bond  Street,  to  be  sure,  meant  nothing  to 
that  boy. 

Bond  Street  had  not  yet  become  so  great  a  mill- 
race  for  Anglo-Saxon  fashion  as  it  is  to-day,  just  as 
London  itself,  huge  though  it  was,  had  not  yet  be- 
gun to  cater  to  the  stranger,  unless  he  was  himself 
an  Englishman.  London  was  still  a  terrible  place 
for  the  cosmopolitan's  feeding;  it  offered  him  beef 
and  potatoes,  and  not  much  else.  If  one  lived  in, 
say,  the  Midlands,  or  the  North,  one  came  "up  to 
town"  for  a  week,  or  a  month;  one  stayed  at  some 
dingy  private  hotel  near  the  Embankment;  one  went 
to  the  theaters;  one  shopped  a  little;  and  with  that, 
one  had  done  one's  duty.  There  was  no  question  of 
a  great  international  artery  of  the  world's  fashion- 


214  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

ables  being  visible  in  the  great  West  End;  that  was 
not  down  in  the  guide  books,  nor  did  any  of  the 
elders  seek  to  illumine  our  generation. 

Those  elders  may  have  gone  to  merry  and  per- 
haps unmoral  routs  where  now  the  Trocadero  feeds 
a  section  of  the  theater  throng;  they  may  have  fore- 
gathered at  the  Star  and  Garter;  but,  if  so,  they 
told  us  nothing  about  it.  No,  it  was  not  until  after 
the  Victorian  period  that  Bond  Street  really  entered 
upon  its  present  paramount  allure;  it  was  not  until 
the  end  of  that  period  that  the  reign  of  the  frock 
coat  and  the  high  hat  seemed  even  so  much  as 
threatened. 

An  American  in  London  only  fifteen  years  ago 
invariably  felt  a  wave  of  relief  as  he  saw  a  soft  hat, 
for  then  he  knew  another  American  was  approach- 
ing. To-day  you  may  see  all  manner  of  hats  in  Bond 
Street;  the  Hombourg  hats,  so-called,  presumably, 
because  they  came  from  Tyrol  and  not  Hombourg; 
tweed  hats  like  nothing  in  the  world  but  frying  pans, 
and  immaculate  bowlers  perched  far  back  upon  the 
heads  of  glorious  Bond  Street  dandies  in  lounge 
suits.  In  the  increase  of  the  latter  combination  you 
may  find  the  real  rival  to  the  frock  coat  and  top 
hat  convention.  The  London  tailor,  patterning  after 
the  Fifth  Avenue  model,  has  finally  turned  out  what 
we  call  on  this  side  a  sack  suit  that  completes  a  man 
as  well  dressed  as  any  who  ever  robed  himself  for  a 
wedding. 

Time  was,  too,  when  English  fashionables  could 
be  heard  audibly  to  declare,  in  Bond  Street,  with 
patronizing  tone  and  surprised  manner,  that  Ameri- 
cans were  "always  rather  smart/'  as  if  it  were,  some- 


LONDON  215 

how,  a  miracle  that  we  did  not  appear  clothed  in  the 
leaves  of  the  forest.  That  time,  you  see,  is  gone; 
by  showing  Bond  Street  how  well  it  was  possible  to 
cut  the  lounge  jacket  we  of  Fifth  Avenue  have  by 
now  almost  routed  the  frock  coat  and  top  hat. 

We  know,  of  course,  that  there  will  be  always 
those  who  will  wear  them,  since  that  style  best  real- 
izes their  sartorial  character;  there  will  always  be 
frock  coats,  even  outside  of  Brooklyn,  just  as  there 
will  always  be  funerals  and  weddings ;  but  the  point 
I  make  is  that,  at  long  last,  a  century  of  British  con- 
vention has  crumbled  when,  to-day,  the  Bond  Street 
exquisite  who  parades  his  long  coat  and  his  high  hat 
appears  somehow  outmoded,  rococo. 

AN  impression  still  lingers  that  the  only  season 
for  London  and  Bond  Street  is  the  spring.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  autumn  is  really  the  season  of  London 
for  the  English.  London  for  the  Americans  is  an- 
other matter  altogether.  Just  as  most  Americans 
get  their  impression  of  Paris  from  the  Paris  of  be- 
tween June  and  September — a  Paris  void  of  its 
proper  soul — so  have  they  for  years  imagined  that 
"the  season"  in  London  began  in  May  and  ended 
some  ten  or  twelve  weeks  later.  But  that  is  merely 
a  half-truth.  If  it  is  quite  true  that  there  are  still 
millions  of  people  in  Paris  after  the  "grande  se- 
maine,"  so  it  is  true  that  the  season  of  fashionable 
entertainments,  of  the  opera,  and  of  all  the  set  forms 
and  institutions  does  fall  into  the  London  spring. 
But  the  Paris  of  after  the  Grand  Prix  is  a  town 
wherein  Americans  almost  jostle  one  another,  a 
town  whose  real  personages  are  all  taking  the  air 


2i6  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

or  the  water  somewhere  else;  and  the  London  of 
the  summer  is  a  town  wherein  the  big  shops  on  Ox- 
ford and  Regent  Streets  mark  their  prices  in  dollars 
and  cents  rather  than  pounds,  shillings,  and  pence. 

In  the  autumn  much  of  this  disappears.  Bond 
Street  is  no  longer  a  parade  of  the  obviously  curious 
and  observant  visitor;  it  is  a  street  whereon,  at  this 
season,  the  Englishman  and  Englishwoman  reign 
supreme.  They  may  not  be  Londoners;  they  may 
be  from  the  North,  East,  or  West  of  England,  but 
they  are  English;  you  hear  it  in  their  voices,  you  see 
it  in  the  way  some  of  them  wear  their  Paris  frocks, 
and  in  the  way  that  others  allow  their  English  tailor- 
mades  to  display  the  arrogance  with  which  these 
islanders  can  achieve  the  unlovely.  Yes,  London  in 
October  is  the  London  that  the  English  love.  It  is 
in  the  autumn  that  the  real  English  "come  up  to 
town." 

Keep  your  eyes  open  and  you  will  see  this  driven 
home  everywhere.  If  you  have  imagined  that  ebb- 
ing of  the  American  tides  leaves  London  desolate, 
you  were  never  more  mistaken  in  your  life.  The 
shops,  the  tailors,  the  modistes,  and  the  milliners 
are  never  more  prosperous  than  during  a  London 
summer  set  into  fall.  The  theaters,  opening  one 
after  another  with  novelties,  quickly — with  very  few 
exceptions — run  into  good  business.  The  Row  is 
crowded  every  fine  afternoon  with  personages  afoot, 
ahorse,  and  in  carriages.  The  paddock  at  Kempton 
Park  is  as  instructive  an  exhibit  for  those  alive  to 
the  suasions  of  fashion  and  of  beauty  as  any  Ascot 
that  ever  was. 

Each  year  the  St.  Luke's  summer  of  England  be- 


LONDON  217 

comes  more  and  more  lovely,  more  like  the  Ameri- 
can Indian  summer.  October  in  London  has  often 
more  tender  days  than  June.  So  one  cannot  blame 
the  English  if  it  is  at  this  time  that  they  like  to  come 
to  a  London  clear  of  Americans.  Business  through- 
out England  may  be  bad,  and  the  condition  of  the 
unemployed  a  vital,  imminent  question  for  the  gov- 
ernment to  settle,  if  it  can,  yet  with  the  Bond  Street 
Londoners  everything  is,  superficially  at  any  rate, 
very  well  indeed.  The  people  who  keep  the  jewelers 
and  tailors  and  dressmakers  going  do  not,  you  see, 
care  very  much  about  the  Suffragettes  trying  to  rush 
the  House  of  Commons,  or  labor  riots,  or  railway 
strikes,  or  the  violent  speeches  that  are  made  daily 
in  the  Park  near  the  Marble  Arch.  The  fine  com- 
placency of  the  well-to-do  classes  in  England  still 
lifts  these  people  above  the  woes  of  their  less  fortu- 
nate mortals.  They  think,  with  Marie  Antoinette, 
that  distress  and  poverty  are  doubtless  there;  but  one 
takes  them  for  granted,  like  the  smoke  or  the  noise 
of  the  motor  buses. 

As  for  Bernard  Shaw,  whether  he  has  been  lectur- 
ing on  "Political  Laziness/'  or  announcing  that  he 
does  not  wash,  or  wear  a  white  collar,  one  dismisses 
him  as  being  "a  rotten  Radical,"  and  one  goes  to 
one's  club  and  pretends  an  interest  in  the  Balkans; 
the  Balkans  are  safe  inasmuch  as  they  are  fairly  re- 
mote, and,  despite  their  qualities  as  avenues  for  all 
that  is  volcanic  in  European  politics,  have  at  least 
the  virtue  that  they  cannot  talk  back  to  us  and  con- 
vince us  that  in  our  safe  and  comfortable  chairs  at 
the  club  we  are  talking  unmitigated  bosh.  Mrs. 
Pankhurst  and  her  two  familiars  may  drive  down 


2i8  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

Bond  Street  in  a  fashionably  caparisoned  turnout, 
bowing  right  and  left  in  her  efforts  to  attract  the  at- 
tention of  those  whom  the  banner  she  holds  aloft 
may  have  left  cold;  but  she  does  not  convince  us 
that  she  is  in  the  least  different  from  all  the  other 
notoriety-seekers  who  have  flitted  their  brief  mo- 
ments across  the  modern  limelight. 

And  so  your  real  Englishman  enjoys  his  London 
and  his  Bond  Street,  when  Americans  no  longer 
fill  the  scene.  Your  real  Englishman  loves  us  Ameri- 
cans, of  course,  but  if  you  approach  him  shrewdly, 
if  you  conceal  a  little  the  nasal  nature  of  your  speech, 
he  will  admit  to  you  that  "I  don't  come  up  to  town, 
you  see,  if  I  can  help  it,  until  it's  clear  of  all  these 
Americans,  don't  you  see."  Did  not  Bellamy  the 
Magnificent  say  the  Americans  spoil  shopping  in 
London  "because  they  will  insist  on  paying  cash  just 
to  get  the  discounts?" 

But  the  Englishman,  we  know,  loves  to  grumble, 
even  when  he  is  happiest.  Grumbling,  indeed,  is 
doubtless  an  element  in  his  happiness,  and  if,  even 
in  a  wonderful  English  version  of  our  Indian  sum- 
mers the  Londoner  still  grumbles  at  our  American 
ways,  we  are  but  adding  to  the  items  in  his  happiness. 

As  to  whether  Bond  Street  or  Fifth  Avenue  leads 
in  fashionable  clothes  for  men,  that  is,  of  course, 
eternally  matter  of  opinion.  The  question  is  so 
huge.  Is  it  decided  by  the  men  who  wear  the  clothes, 
by  the  clothes  themselves,  or  by  the  men  who  cut 
them?  All  separate,  equally  engrossing  details. 
For  my  part,  I  believe  the  infinitesimally  small  frac- 
tion of  male  fashion  that  at  rare  intervals  takes  the 


LONDON  219 

Bond  Street  sun  to  be  the  best  dressed  body  in  the 
world;  you  may  justly  differ  and  vote  for  Fifth 
Avenue. 

The  mistake  about  the  slovenly  dressing  in  Lon- 
don is  easy  to  make.  The  average  Londoner  is  in- 
deed sloppy;  you  may  see  the  most  abominable  coats, 
the  most  ill-assorted  garments  of  every  sort,  in  that 
town;  and,  if  you  are  not  there  in  the  right  season — 
nay,  more,  if  you  do  not  see  even  Bond  Street  in  one 
of  its  best  moods — you  may  continue  in  the  belief 
that  London  men  do  not  know  how  to  dress.  You 
will  see  abominably  turned-out  men — one  has  long 
since  known  London  women  to  be  sartorially  hope- 
less— who  would  be  a  conspicuous  vice  in  any  second- 
rate  American  town.  The  number  of  shocking  hats, 
distressing  trousers  and  shabby  ties  is  equaled  only 
by  the  abominable  boots  to  be  seen  everywhere  in 
London.  When  the  average  Londoner  ties  his  four- 
in-hand  he  likes  to  leave  a  gaping  half-inch  or  so  be- 
tween the  knot  and  the  shirt-stud;  the  result  is  as  if 
he  had  dressed  for  an  alarm  of  fire.  But  that  is  all 
part  of  the  burden  the  town  carries  in  being  a  hive 
so  enmillioned;  the  average  is  necessarily  very  far 
below  the  high  exceptions. 

Again,  you  may  wait  long,  to-day,  before  you 
find  in  London  a  conspicuous,  admitted  dandy.  Yet, 
there  are  always  men  more  or  less  military  in  car- 
riage whom  it  is  not  easy  to  mistake  for  anything  else 
but  Guardsmen;  when  a  tailor  of  that  region  has 
done  his  best  for  such  a  British  physique  as  that,  then 
Bond  Street  has  something  to  show  that,  with  all  its 
far  higher  average,  Fifth  Avenue  must  find  it  hard 
to  beat. 


220  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

The  American  average,  it  is  generally  admitted, 
is  the  best  in  the  world.  But  it  has  this  disadvan- 
tage :  so  well  dressed  is  everybody  that  it  is  quite  im- 
possible to  tell  the  banker  from  the  drummer,  the 
hotel  clerk  from  the  millionaire.  We  all  dress  well; 
yet,  unless  we  can  add,  too,  the  touch  of  individuality, 
we  might  as  well  be  turned  out  of  one  single  slot. 
.  .  .  We  resent  certain  forms  of  individuality,  it 
is  true;  yet,  in  proper  relation  to  sensible  fashions,  it 
has  its  fine  qualities. 

FASHIONABLES  have,  one  believes,  now  emerged 
from  that  despotism  wherein  any  one  dandy  could 
lead  them.  It  is  not  so  long  ago  since  the  pretense 
was  made  that  the  First  Gentlemen  in  Europe  led 
the  masculine  fashion;  but  to-day  that  is  no  longer 
true.  Every  decade  or  so,  you  may  recall,  the  fiat 
was  wont  to  go  forth  that  slovenliness  was  to  be  the 
order  of  the  day.  The  Prince  was  pictured  as  ap- 
pearing in  a  shocking  coat,  in  baggy  trousers,  and  a 
disgraceful  hat,  the  very  picture  of  the  Little  Eng- 
lander  on  the  Continent.  Tailordom  would  be  one 
great  groan,  but  we  can  readily  see  that  any  person- 
ages whose  sartorial  habits  were  constantly  being 
reported  to  the  world  might,  from  time  to  time,  re- 
volt or  adopt  such  a  ruse.  The  loungers  of  the 
Bois,  the  dummies  of  the  Linden,  the  regulars  of 
Bond  Street,  and  the  democratic  fashionables  of 
Fifth  Avenue  would  thus,  every  now  and  again,  be 
left  to  their  own  devices. 

Yes,  in  those  other  decades,  there  were  indeed 
sad  moments  for  all  those  dandies  without  a  leader. 
To  be  English  was,  as  always,  the  aim  of  all  the 


LONDON  221 

males  in  Europe ;  and  when  the  English  leader  failed 
them,  what  were  they  to  do  ?  One  could  fancy  them 
calling  upon  fate  for  a  new  Beau  Brummel.  But  the 
day  for  any  one  man  holding  that  title,  even  though 
he  be  a  prince,  has,  one  thinks,  gone  by.  The  world 
is  now  too  large  and  too  broken  into  sets.  To-day, 
in  New  York,  the  secret  of  single  leadership  seems 
lost.  There  are  too  many  well-dressed  men  here, 
and  the  standard  is  too  rigorously  quiet  for  any  in- 
dividual to  excel. 

There  was  once  a  Berry  Wall,  a  Prescott  Law- 
rence, an  Onativia,  and  even  an  Ollie  Teall,  but  the 
noise  of  their  dandydom  is  no  longer  heard  in  the 
land.  He  who  to-day  dresses  conspicuously  in  any 
particular  ceases  to  be  well  dressed.  Yet  that  is  a 
pity,  if  it  is  to  mean  the  exclusion  of  any  ever  so  faint 
a  note  of  personality.  To  dress  their  individuality 
suits  some  men  better  than  to  compress  them- 
selves to  a  mode.  Take  out  of  our  recollection 
Whistler  with  his  Parisian  hat  and  reed-like  cane,  the 
Hammerstein  hat  and  the  Augustin  Daly  hat,  George 
Francis  Train  with  his  white  duck  suit  and  his  scarlet 
boutonniere,  Mark  Twain  with  his  pale  evening 
clothes,  the  red  waistcoats  of  the  Montmartre  ro- 
mance, the  topboots  of  Joaquin  Miller,  and  the 
slouch  hat  and  cape  of  Tennyson,  and  you  take  out 
much  of  spice  and  charm. 

Just  a  spice  of  such  individuality  it  is,  I  think,  that 
has  made  the  Bond  Street  man  reach  a  little  higher 
mark  than  we  of  Fifth  Avenue.  Recall,  again,  those 
caricatures  by  Spy.  Again,  London  has  introduced 
into  the  domain  of  clothes  the  touch  of  humor,  as 
evidenced  in  the  criticisms  passed  annually  by  an 


222  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

organ  of  the  tailoring  trade  upon  the  portraits  in 
Burlington  House.  When  a  painter  fumbles  his  de- 
piction of  clothes,  or  when  a  sitter  proves  himself 
slovenly  in  any  detail,  this  aforesaid  periodical 
gravely  comments  upon  these  works  of  art  strictly 
from  the  sartorial  standpoint.  None  of  us  on  Fifth 
Avenue  has  yet  reached  that  stage  of  sartorial  so- 
phistication or  critical  humor. 

Without  character,  finally,  clothes  may  be  perfect, 
but  they  cannot  be  the  proper  complement  of  man. 
We  may  have,  here  on  Fifth  Avenue,  a  more  per- 
fect average  of  male  attire;  we  may  have  immacu- 
lateness,  but  we  also  have  a  somewhat  toneless  mono- 
tone, lacking  all  spirit,  all  hint  of  the  individual. 

In  the  region  of  St.  George's,  Hanover  Square, 
some  victories  for  individual  fashion  may  still  be 
won.  Fashionables  from  Fifth  Avenue,  if  they 
know  exactly  what  they  want,  may  still  convince  even 
the  Bond  Street  tailor.  The  defeat  of  the  frock 
coat  has  somewhat  humbled  that  person.  From  this 
same  region  it  is  possible  to  extract  the  joy  of  the  in- 
ventor. Here,  several  seasons  before  they  were  seen 
on  Fifth  Avenue,  some  of  us  slanged  our  tailors 
into  cutting  the  sack  coat  slashed  wide  open  in  front, 
into  using  for  such  coats  a  double  button  looped  like 
a  sleeve  link,  and  into  making  them  without  linings 
save  of  the  skeleton  description.  Here  we  astounded 
the  shears  fraternity  by  demanding  dinner  suits  made 
of  dark  gray  rather  than  dead  black.  And  here, 
after  having  patiently  listened  to  the  tone  in  which 
all  these  were  marked  as  American  "eccentricities," 
we  had  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  the  Bond  Street 
exquisites  similarly  attired  a  season  or  so  later. 


LONDON  223 

In  the  main,  however,  it  is  a  give-and-take  game 
between  Bond  Street  and  Fifth  Avenue;  the  one 
copies  only  the  best  from  the  other.  Many  of  our 
Western  absurdities  of  ultra  pockets,  turned-back 
cuffs  on  coats,  etc.,  etc.,  Bond  Street  will  not  have  at 
any  price. 

Neither  of  these  two  streets,  however,  in  New 
York  or  London,  deserves  such  precision  of  detail  as 
falls  into  the  tediousness  of  statistics  or  of  prose  ac- 
cording to  Butterick.  We  Americans  have  rarely 
dared  write  of  men's  fashions  at  all;  perhaps  that  is 
one  excuse  for  even  so  much  in  that  direction  as  this. 
In  one  weekly  paper  here  on  Fifth  Avenue  there  was 
once  a  writer  who  touched  the  subject,  but  he  took 
so  offensively  snobbish  a  stand  as  to  become  soon 
enough  supremely  absurd. 

Fashion  for  men  must,  at  its  best,  ever  find  a  level 
somewhere  between  quiet  common  sense  and  indi- 
vidual character.  And  both  these  may  be  seen  at 
their  best  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  world  in  the  fashion- 
able processions  of  Bond  Street  and  Fifth  Avenue. 

II 

SEEN    FROM   A    PENNY    CHAIR 

IF  Bond  Street  is  the  main  artery,  Hyde  Park  is 
the  heart  of  London.  Mayfair  may  have  its  splen- 
did functions  within  doors ;  potentates  may  have  bril- 
liant processions  and  pageants;  Bond  Street  may 
display  its  comedy  of  fashion;  the  most  effective  and 
fascinating  show  is,  after  all,  to  be  found  in  the 
park. 


224  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

The  park,  and  the  police  remain  for  many  wise 
observers  the  finest  things  in  London.  These  are 
the  London  features  which  appeal  most  to  the  cos- 
mopolitan of  refinement,  and  many  hardened  Lon- 
doners agree  with  this  conclusion.  One  may  live  in 
London  all  one's  life,  you  see,  and  be  quite  ignorant 
of  the  inside  of  Westminster  Abbey,  or  the  Museum, 
or  the  many  claimants  to  the  site  of  "The  Old  Curi- 
osity Shop."  If  you  mention  familiarity  with  these 
details  to  any  member  of  the  tribe  encamped  between 
Bayswater  and  Berkeley  Square,  you  will  elicit  a 
large  look  of  surprise,  as  if  to  say,  "What  curious 
creatures  these  Americans  are!"  But  the  park  and 
the  police  are  the  inescapable  virtues  of  the  town; 
they  appeal  to  the  years  and  the  months,  not  the  days 
and  the  weeks.  One  does  not  need  to  come  into  con- 
tact with  towers,  abbeys  or  museums,  since  these 
things  pall  upon  all  save  those  determined  feverishly 
to  "do  London  in  three  days"  ;  but  one  is  forced  daily 
upon  the  protection  of  both  the  park  and  the  police. 
And  to  get  to  the  park  you  can  seldom  manage,  in 
an  average  crowded  season,  to  get  along  without 
the  help  of  the  police.  So  one  may,  before  going  fur- 
ther, consider  briefly  the  London  police,  the  best,  I 
believe,  in  the  world. 

IN  urban  and  suburban  transit,  London  is  still  in 
process  of  being  rescued  from  mediaeval  conditions; 
the  town's  fire  department  is  tragically  behind  the 
times;  but  the  police  force,  ah,  there  one  can  only 
admire !  In  the  first  place,  they  look  like  business. 
All  stalwart,  staunch  fellows,  they  not  infrequently 
make  the  average  "Tommy"  of  the  army  look  quite 


LONDON  225 

stunted.  In  looks  only  our  own  American  policeman 
equals  them.  The  Paris  policeman  never  looks  any- 
thing but  sloppy,  and  his  notion  of  how  to  control 
traffic  at  crowded  street  crossings  is  enough  to  make 
one  shout  with  laughter.  Nobody  minds  him,  and 
his  attempts  upon  the  speed  of  the  Parisian  cabby 
only  result  in  a  slanging-match,  at  full  voice,  that 
makes  one  imagine  the  entire  French  Republic  is  once 
again  about  to  dislocate  its  jaw.  As  a  friend  of  mine 
put  it,  the  Paris  policeman,  at  important  crossings, 
appears  to  be  doing  nothing  but  "looking  pleasant." 
Concerning  the  legend  that  if  you  are  knocked  down 
by  a  cab  in  Paris  it  is  the  custom  of  the  policeman 
to  arrest  you  and  have  you  fined,  I  will  say  nothing 
save  that  many  Americans  will  go  to  their  graves  be- 
lieving it  true.  The  retort  of  the  Parisian  seems 
rather  far-fetched;  it  is  to  the  effect  that  quantities  of 
notoriety  or  death-seeking  people,  having  taken  to 
the  habit  of  throwing  themselves  in  front  of  speed- 
ing cabs,  it  was  found  necessary,  in  order  to  protect 
the  insurance  companies,  as  well  as  the  general  weal, 
to  pass  a  law  to  prevent  such  would-be  suicides  from 
receiving  compensation.  It  is  this  law  that  has,  in 
its  working  results,  given  rise  to  the  foregoing  Amer- 
ican legend.  But,  as  I  said  before,  the  Parisian  ex- 
planation is  unwieldy  and  clumsy;  observation  of 
Parisian  street  traffic  is  all  that  is  really  necessary 
to  impress  one  with  the  belief  that,  in  case  of  need, 
the  Paris  policeman  would  always,  with  much  noise 
and  melodrama,  arrest  the  wrong  person. 

The  police  of  Berlin  are  vastly  better  than  those 
of  Paris.  They  do  not  look  as  well,  by  our  notions, 
as  their  English  equals,  but  they  are  fairly  smart. 


226  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

The  mounted  force  is  much  in  evidence,  and  looks 
really  fine,  on  good  horses.  The  men  are  polite, 
control  traffic  inexorably,  and  see  to  it  that  Berlin 
remains  one  of  the  cleanest,  most  orderly,  if  ugliest, 
of  cities.  But,  as  individuals,  the  Berlin  policemen 
are  hardly  to  be  counted  at  all;  they  are  merely,  like 
all  else  in  German  officialdom,  automatic  parts  of  a 
huge  machine.  When  anything  happens  to  you  more 
serious  than  crossing  a  congested  street  or  losing 
you  way,  you  are  fairly  certain  of  running  hard 
against  a  city  ordinance,  mechanically  enforced  by 
the  man  on  the  beat.  Nor  argument  nor  coaxing 
prevails.  There  is  the  regulation,  and  here  the  in- 
strument to  enforce  it;  the  human  element  is  en- 
tirely absent.  Nor  can  one,  in  Berlin,  count  upon  a 
sense  of  humor  in  the  police.  The  pranks  of  the 
American  college  boy  would  not  strike  the  Berlin 
policeman  as  humorous;  arrests  would  be  the  only 
result.  Both  Italy  and  France  are,  as  to  their  police, 
more  human,  where  the  quality  of  humor  is  intro- 
duced. In  Paris  you  may  make  almost  as  much  noise 
as  the  cab-drivers  themselves,  and  in  Rome  a  friend 
of  mine  cut  all  the  strings  of  a  toy-balloon  vender's 
stock,  the  other  day,  just  for  the  fun  of  it,  only  an 
expostulation  from  the  nearest  policeman  being  his 
punishment,  seeing  he  paid  the  peddler  the  price  of 
his  stock  in  full.  In  Berlin  you  might  have  paid  the 
peddler  the  price  of  a  hundred  balloons;  you  would 
still  have  been  arrested. 

In  humor,  in  urbanity,  as  in  perfect  control  of  his 
district,  the  London  policeman  is  the  nearest  possible 
approach  to  perfection.  To  the  stranger  he  seems 
the  politest  of  all  the  Londoners.  The  shop  people 


LONDON  227 

in  London  are,  in  the  average,  both  stupid  and  rude ; 
the  supposedly  well-bred  people  in  Hyde  Park,  if  a 
hapless  vagabond  were  to  come  to  them  for  infor- 
mation, would  be  either  insolent  or  unintelligible; 
the  policeman,  however,  seems  invariably  polite, 
wonderfully  well  informed,  and  furnished  with  Eng- 
lish that  is  not  nearly  so  atrociously  cockney  as  that 
of  some  who  fancy  themselves  his  betters.  I  have 
yet  to  find  the  American  who,  on  approaching  a  Lon- 
don policeman  under  any  circumstances  whatever, 
did  not  come  from  the  encounter  grateful  to  the 
"copper"  in  question. 

Chiefly,  however,  it  is  in  his  control  of  traffic, 
awheel  and  afoot,  that  the  London  policeman  is  un- 
rivaled. When  you  consider  the  narrowness  of  the 
streets  you  must  constantly  marvel  at  the  problems 
the  London  policeman  is  hourly  asked  to  solve.  The 
wonder  is  not  so  much  that  cab  accidents  occur,  but 
that  they  should  not  be  of  hourly  occurrence.  Even 
with  our  own  broad  thoroughfares  the  traffic  at  cer- 
tain points  is  awkward  enough;  in  the  narrow  ways 
of  London  it  would,  but  for  the  policeman,  be  im- 
possible. Of  all  the  many  paths  the  London  police 
make  smooth  for  the  wayfarer,  the  pleasantest,  and 
the  most  important,  leads  to  the  park,  where  there  is 
never  any  end  to  the  panorama  or  to  the  vitality  of 
interest. 

IF  you  get  up  reasonably  early  you  will  find  the 
Row  alive  with  notabilities.  Occasionally  these  ride 
later,  between  eleven  and  twelve,  when  the  world  of 
fashion  is  in  full  array  upon  the  penny  chairs,  but 
mostly  it  is  the  very  early  morning  that  sees  the  best 


228  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

riding  of  the  day.  It  is  the  early  mornings,  too, 
that  see  the  rhododendrons  at  their  fairest,  with  only 
the  green  lawns  and  the  trees  as  background  to  their 
pink  and  scarlet  and  white  splendor.  It  is  really  one 
of  the  wonderful  things  of  the  world,  this  feast  of 
fashion,  of  human  and  equine  aristocracy,  that  Hyde 
Park  gives  one  for  the  price  of  a  penny  chair.  One 
spends  one's  two-cent  piece,  and  is  thereafter  free  of 
the  most  typical,  most  satisfactory  spectacle  in  Lon- 
don; there  are  regions  of  the  park  where  you  may 
see  the  red-cheeked  children  of  England;  elsewhere 
you  light  upon  the  amateurs  of  miniature  yacht  rac- 
ing; here  you  come  upon  a  military  company  prac- 
ticing signals,  and  there  you  encounter  a  crowd  as- 
sembled to  hear  the  flaming  rhetoric  of  Socialism. 
Contrasts  are  everywhere,  but  everywhere  also,  and 
dominant  above  all  else,  are  the  flower  and  fashion 
of  London. 

In  fine  weather  Hyde  Park  is  one  lovely  lawn 
party  for  all  England.  Between  eleven  and  twelve 
in  the  morning  the  beaux  and  the  beauties  stroll  and 
sit  along  the  Row;  from  Hyde  Park  corner  to  the 
Albert  Gate  crossing  all  is  a  frou-frou  of  ruffles  and 
laces  and  chatter  and  laughter.  The  men,  in  the 
average,  are  a  well  set-up,  well  groomed  lot;  neatly 
frockcoated  and  in  high  silk  hats.  Occasionally 
there  is  an  American  or  a  man  just  up  from  Oxford, 
distinguishable  by  straw  hat  and  flannels.  The 
women  are  in  their  most  elaborate,  airiest  gowns; 
the  American  women,  who  appear  now  and  then, 
contrast  strangely,  in  their  snug  costumes,  against 
the  loose  fussiness  of  the  English  out-door  mode.  It 
is  some  little  time  before  an  American  becomes  used 


LONDON  229 

to  realization  of  the  fact  that  Hyde  Park  is  one  vast 
lawn  party,  and  that  the  fitting  dress  for  it  is  the 
filmiest  material  imaginable. 

Like  the  metropolis  itself,  Hyde  Park  has  its  cus- 
toms and  its  rules.  In  the  morning  one  sits  or  strolls 
in  the  Row;  in  the  afternoon  one  sits  on  the  grass 
opposite  Stanhope  or  Grosvenor  Gate.  Gradually 
the  carriages  increase  in  number.  Well-known  peo- 
ple appear.  Before  one  is  the  erratic  architecture  of 
Park  Lane,  with  its  countless  varied  interests.  Here 
all  the  newest  millionaires  have  houses;  yonder  the 
Stars  and  Stripes  flies  over  Whitelaw  Reid's  tempo- 
rary abode,  and  nearby  is  the  younger  Pierpont  Mor- 
gan's domicile.  Ducal  residences  are  too  frequent 
to  deserve  notice  in  Park  Lane.  Their  owners  may 
be  beside  you  in  the  grass,  on  penny  chairs;  you  never 
can  tell. 

Occasionally  the  procession  of  carriages  stops; 
those  nearest  the  curb  are  opened  while  the  occupants 
alight  and  join  friends  sitting  on  the  lawn.  One 
chatters  of  where  one  is  going  to-night,  to-morrow 
and  the  next  day.  One  is  to  meet  at  a  Carlton  House 
terrace  dinner,  or  at  Ranelagh,  or  at  Goodwood. 
The  most  marvelous  creatures  go  up  and  down  be- 
fore one;  South  African  millionaires  of  Semitic 
cast;  clean-shaven  dandies  who  may,  for  all  one  can 
guess,  be  mere  West  End  counterjumpers ;  dowdy  but 
impressive  dowagers  bristling  with  diamonds,  lace 
and  lorgnettes.  One  hears  an  entertaining  melange 
of  conversational  scraps.  A  florid  man,  who  knows 
all  the  sporting  celebrities,  is  turning  little  flashes  of 
light  upon  the  passing  throng,  for  the  edification  of 
his  son,  still  burned  by  the  sun  of  India.  "You  see 


230  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

that  chap,"  he  says,  indicating  with  his  eyes  a  man 
who  seems  a  cross  between  a  Baron  Chevrial  and  a 
clothing-store  dummy,  uwhat  d'you  suppose  he  is? 
Sells  pickles!  An  Italian — sells  pickles;  and  this  is 
how  he  spends  his  money.  Gets  'em  all  on,'  then 
comes  here  and  stares  at  the  women.  Walks  up  and 
down  here  and  then  goes  home  and  sells  pickles." 
People  constantly  walk  up  and  down  on  the  gravel 
walk  between  the  lawn  and  the  driveway;  constantly 
they  bow  and  speak  to  one  another;  it  is  London's 
largest  party.  The  facets  of  the  picture  are  so  many 
that  it  is  not  easy  to  watch  them  all  at  once ;  one  can 
spend  the  entire  London  season  in  mastering  its  de- 
tails. In  the  carriages  are  stiff  males  and  lace-cov- 
ered beauties,  orientals  and  pagans,  poodles  and 
terriers. 

ALL  the  fashion  and  frills  of  Hyde  Park  are  not 
confined  to  the  driveway  between  Albert  Gate  and 
the  Marble  Arch.  To  take  tea  in  Kensington  Gar- 
dens is  an  almost  equally  pleasant  part  of  the  great 
panorama  of  Hyde  Park.  It  is  just  a  pleasant  walk, 
no  matter  whether  you  enter  the  park  at  Albert  Gate 
or  at  Lancaster  Gate,  on  the  Bayswater  side.  You 
enter  by  the  little  walk  near  the  bridge  over  the 
Serpentine,  and  proceed  to  find,  under  the  trees,  near 
the  sign  announcing  uis  6d  Teas,"  the  most  comfort- 
able positions  possible.  These  are  usually  comfort- 
able enough,  being  spacious  garden-chairs  of  wicker, 
placed  about  little  round  tables,  the  which  are  under 
huge  Japanese  umbrellas  so  large  as  to  be  almost 
small  tents.  After  you  have  tried  the  eagle-eye  trick 
on  the  waiters  for  about  ten  minutes,  in  vain,  you 


LONDON  231 

probably  sally  forth  and  kidnap  one  of  these  vassals 
who,  in  turn,  in  almost  another  ten  minutes,  brings 
you  "a  tea."  All  these  waiters  are  German.  If  you 
are  an  American  and  want  a  glass  of  water  to  drink, 
even  with  tea,  you  will  have  hot  water  brought  you. 
It  is  useless  to  get  angry;  you  will  never  convince  the 
Kensington  Gardens  tea-tyrants  that  cold  water  must 
have  existed  where  hot  water  is  procurable;  they 
have,  apparently,  never  heard  of  water  as  a  bever- 
age. In  England,  in  different  spots,  "a  tea"  means 
many  different  things.  In  Kensington  Gardens  it 
means  a  pot  of  tea,  with  hot  water,  sugar  and  milk; 
some  slices  of  bread  and  butter,  cut  thin,  and  some 
fruit-cake.  The  tea  is  fair,  but  the  prospect  is  fairer. 
Well-dressed  people  are  under  nearly  every  umj- 
brella ;  uniforms  and  oriental  costumes  are  all  about, 
and  over  all  is  the  intimate  majesty  of  the  trees,  and 
the  wonderful  quiet  of  this  corner  of  the  park,  that 
might,  for  all  one  can  hear  or  see,  be  a  thousand 
miles  from  town. 

Walking  away  from  Kensington  Gardens  one  is 
not  unlikely  to  come  upon  many  curious  features,  as, 
for  instance,  the  old  gentleman  in  the  black  stock 
who  feeds  the  sparrows.  He  has  names  for  many  of 
them,  and  they  come  as  he  calls  them,  perching  on 
his  hand  to  feed.  He  pays  no  heed  to  the  carriages, 
the  strollers,  or  the  automobiles. 

On  Sundays  the  routine  of  the  park  is  changed. 
The  bandstand  becomes  the  magnet  for  a  multitude 
that  is  composed  of  the  plain  people,  not  the  fashion- 
ables. The  fashionables  appear  only  for  church 
parade,  for  a  half-hour  or  so  just  after  high  noon, 
opposite  Stanhope  and  Grosvenor  Gates,  and  again 


232  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

in  the  late  afternoon.  Near  the  Marble  Arch  the 
Socialist  gatherings  are  thick.  Kensington  Gardens, 
on  Sundays,  however,  no  longer  serve  tea  to  the 
select,  but  to  the  outsiders.  These  little  distinctions 
have  to  be  learned  by  experience.  Hyde  Park  is  not 
in  a  hurry  to  explain  all  its  whims  to  the  uninitiate. 

WHIMS,  moods,  were  not  always,  as  to-day,  to  be 
found  in  London  town.  Where  all  was  once  glacial 
manner,  moods,  even  the  mood  of  passion,  can  now 
be  traced  by  the  critic  from  his  penny  chair. 

Many  and  changing  are  the  moods  of  towns;  we 
all  know  how  mercurial  are  the  moods  of  Paris,  and 
how  those  moods  have  made  and  unmade  history. 
Until  quite  recent  times  such  moodishness  has  been 
but  slightly  typical  of  London.  The  town  remained 
sullen  in  its  stoic  reserve.  The  ha'penny  papers  were 
allowed  to  shriek  their  woes  and  crimes  to  an  au- 
dience that,  standing  in  superior  attitudes  before  the 
club  fire,  contented  itself  with  wondering  haughtily 
what  these  abominable  rags  would  do  next.  The 
actual  news  of  the  world  was  by  no  manner  of  means 
supposed  to  affect  the  welfare  or  otherwise  of  the 
aforesaid  superior  person  before  the  club  fire.  But 
the  stoic  reserve  is  off  now;  the  sullenness  is  changed 
to  passionate  excitement,  and  London,  for  once  in 
its  foggy  life,  is  awake.  The  tenseness  of  its  newer 
moods  jumps  at  you  from  every  corner.  Of  old  po- 
litical campaigns  made  passing  subjects  for  conver- 
sation in  casual  places  and  among  casual  persons; 
but  nowadays  politics  are  an  inescapable  obsession. 
The  most  absent-minded  of  travellers  cannot  avoid 


LONDON  233 

being  struck  by  the  change  that  has  come  upon  Lon- 
don. And  London  is  but  typical  of  all  England. 

In  ordinary  seasons,  in  the  last  few  years,  there 
has  been  only  slight  variation  in  the  several  sullen 
moods  of  London.  If  we  except  certain  scenes  dur- 
ing the  Boer  War,  these  moods  have  been  no  more 
than  the  moods  of  fashion  or  the  season.  The  shop- 
keepers were  servile  in  the  one  season,  and  con- 
descending in  the  other.  Yet  all  these  petty  differ- 
ences in  mood  were  matters  only  for  the  detection  of 
the  keen  observer.  The  newer  paramount  excite- 
ment is  another  matter  altogether;  it  hits  the  eye  and 
ear  and  brain  of  the  most  superficial  idler.  It  is  im- 
possible to  walk  two  streets  without  seeing  and  hear- 
ing the  political  travail  of  England. 

In  the  memory  of  those  who  know  their  modern 
London  well  that  town  has  not  worn  so  peculiarly 
distorted  an  appearance  since  the  year  of  the  corona- 
tion. The  present  pervasion  of  political  strife 
through  every  avenue  of  life  and  traffic  has  a  very 
different  effect  from  those  succeeding  waves  of  hope 
and  fear  that  came  upon  the  place  that  year  when 
Edward  VII  lay  ill  in  Buckingham  Palace,  but  to  the 
dispassionate  observer  it  is  none  the  less  of  interest 
and  is  like  to  remain  in  the  memory.  That  peculiar 
hush  which  crept  upon  London  in  the  summer  of  1902 
remains  one  of  the  strangest  physical  expressions 
of  an  urban  mood  that  our  generation  can  recall; 
perhaps  there  has  been  nothing  quite  like  it  on 
the  American  side  of  the  water  save  the  obvious 
solemnity  that  made  itself  felt  in  Union  Square  the 
morning  Henry  George  died  in  New  York. 


234  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

Where  once  the  London  hoardings  held  only  plac- 
ards announcing  entertainments  and  soaps  and  hair- 
restorers,  you  now  find  constantly  predominant  huge 
posters  proclaiming  melodramatically  this  or  that 
political  party  cry.  Here  is  a  gaunt  figure  of  an  un- 
employed British  workman  over  the  legend  "It's 
Work  I  Want,"  next  is  a  loud  printed  cry  "If  the 
People  Do  Not  Tax  the  Dukes  They  Will  Have  to 
Continue  Paying  the  Dukes'  Taxes."  Where  once 
London  traffic  was  interfered  with  by  nothing  more 
alarming  than  this  or  that  street  being  "up"  for  re- 
pairs, the  most  sophisticated  cabhorse  is  to-day  likely 
to  shy  in  the  most  unexpected  places  as  a  result  of 
finding  the  most  outrageously  inartistic  posters  de- 
facing a  hitherto  respectable  private  residence  or 
shop. 

WHATEVER  one's  prejudices — whether  born  and 
bred  of  those  who  are  now  daily  being  pilloried  as 
battening  upon  the  public  toil  or  unearned  incre- 
ment, or  harboring  the  pleasant  belief  that  all  men 
can  be  made  equal  by  taking  thought — it  is  inevitable 
that  one  sees  all  this  conflict  as  between  the  Haves 
and  the  Have  Nots.  Whatever  the  reason,  whether 
free  trade  or  the  absence  of  the  single  tax  on  land, 
the  fact  is  hourly  forced  upon  one  that  no  country 
in  the  civilized  world  has  such  hideous  and  debased 
poverty  as  England.  Italy,  especially  the  districts 
about  Naples,  knows  poverty;  but  that  wears,  com- 
pared to  the  English  article,  a  blithe  and  careless  air. 
Such  sodden,  bleary,  hopeless  derelicts  as  may  be 
seen  anywhere  about  the  streets  of  London,  or  Man- 
chester, or  Newcastle,  or  Liverpool,  it  is  impossible 


LONDON  235 

for  the  untravelled  American  to  conceive.  The  Lon- 
don Lancet  itself  has  observed  that  there  is  nothing 
dirtier  in  the  world  than  the  poorer  sort  of  British 
workingman;  but  the  habitual  workless  and  worth- 
less loafer  is  dirtier  still.  In  other  countries,  in  even 
the  most  crowded  centers,  as  pointed  out  in  my 
Munich  chapter,  it  is  necessary  to  search  for  the 
herded  poor;  in  England  their  poverty,  their  filth, 
their  degradation  are  obtruded  upon  one  in  the 
brightest  of  places.  You  are  never  safe  from  such 
contact.  Something,  then,  is  radically  wrong  with 
conditions  that  permit  of  such  pauperism.  Yet  in 
England  such  conditions,  such  pauperism,  have  al- 
ways existed  in  recent  recollection.  One  doubts 
whether  this  or  that  government,  this  or  that  legis- 
lation, has  bettered  or  worsened  this  sore  in  English 
life.  The  orators  cry  aloud  their  accusations  and 
their  curses,  yet  one  plain  logical  explanation  none 
of  them  has  dared  give,  and  that  is  the  very  simple 
one  of  overpopulation. 

England  is  overpopulated;  English  towns,  more 
than  any  others  in  the  world,  suffer  from  the  "rush 
to  the  city"  and  the  consequent  human  ruins.  No 
political  panacea  can  ever  do  for  England  what  a 
good  thorough  pestilence  might  effect.  Old-age  pen- 
sions, preventives  against  unemployment — none  of 
these  things  can  stay  the  evils  of  that  very  simple 
human  disease:  overpopulation.  The  Radicals  hope 
to  eradicate  pauperism  by  pensions;  and  the  others 
allege  that  tariff  reform  will  put  an  end  to  unemploy- 
ment. But  pauperism  will  always  exist  coordinately 
with  overpopulation;  and  as  for  the  unemployed — 
well,  the  simplest  of  logic  suggests  that  if  work  was 


23 6  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

really  the  dream  and  desire  of  all  those  who  hoarsely 
cry  that  the  foreigner  has  stolen  their  jobs  all  they 
had  to  do  was  to  join  the  British  army,  which  is  con- 
stantly begging  for  recruits.  But  Mr.  Robert 
Blatchford,  Socialist  as  he  is,  knows  his  mobsters  too 
well;  in  a  pamphlet  about  Germany  he  goes  so  far 
as  to  say  that  the  safety  of  England,  in  order  to  have 
a  really  capable  army,  lies  in  conscription.  He 
knows  that  the  professionally  unemployed  will  never 
join  the  army  save  by  force,  just  as  he  knows  that 
many  of  the  unemployed  hate  work  like  poison. 

Overpopulation  has  brought  the  crisis  about.  It 
has  concentrated  the  Have  Nots  against  the  Haves. 
The  Haves  are  not  as  apathetic  or  as  politically 
useless  as  is  the  so-called  silk-stocking  element  in 
America.  They  do  their  duty  at  the  polls,  and  have 
always  done  so.  The  indifference  of  the  "better 
classess"  of  voters  in  America  is  notorious.  Of  that 
indifference,  at  least,  the  gentlemen  of  England  have 
never  been  guilty.  As  Sir  William  Bull  put  it  when 
he  got  down  from  his  platform  and  engaged  in  a 
hand-to-hand  fight  with  a  Radical  interrupter:  "Sir, 
I  am  an  Englishman  first,  and  a  gentleman  after- 
wards." 

So  the  moods  of  England,  serious  and  gay,  the 
moods  that  are  eternal  and  the  moods  that  are  but 
passing,  can  be  witnessed  from  a  penny  chair  in 
Hyde  Park.  All  this  philosophy,  and  all  this  pano- 
rama is  yours  for  the  price  of  a  penny  chair.  It  is 
one  of  the  great  theaters  of  the  world,  this  park; 
kings  and  queens,  millionaires  and  peers  play  on  this 
stage  side  by  side  with  nursemaids  and  fox  terriers. 


LONDON  237 

Here  you  can  study  human  manners  and  cosmic 
tragedy.  At  Hyde  Park  corner  you  may  see,  at  one 
time  or  another,  all  the  important  figures  of  the 
British  Empire. 

Surely  if  any  inanimate  object  knows  London  life 
by  heart,  it  must  be  a  penny  chair  in  Hyde  Park. 

Ill 

A    PRIZEFIGHT    BY   WHITECHAPEL   RULES 

LEST  it  be  supposed  that  details  only  polite  or 
political  are  to  be  emphasized  in  this  glance  at  life 
in  London,  let  me  stray,  from  Bond  Street  and  the 
park,  to  the  extreme  of  Whitechapel. 

It  is  to  be  remarked  that  despite  the  anarchist 
affair  of  Houndsditch,  the  Whitechapel  that  sent 
waves  of  fear  over  our  polite  world,  some  years  ago, 
would  now  be  hard  to  find.  To  the  careless  eye  of 
the  present,  it  remains  merely  an  average  section  of 
an  average  poverty-tenanted  quarter.  It  has  not 
even  the  appearance  of  a  slum.  You  may  walk  the 
Mile  End  Road  as  unmolested  as  you  walk  Park 
Lane.  Streets  have  been  widened,  plague-spotted 
tenements  torn  down.  Apparently  it  is  as  uninterest- 
ing as  Second  Avenue,  in  New  York,  or  Clark  Street, 
in  Chicago.  There  are  countless  shop-legends  that 
suggest  the  Ghetto  and  far-off  Soho,  but  there  is  also 
a  spick  and  span  Art  Gallery  magnificently  laying 
the  ghosts  of  bygone  "Jacks,"  yclept  "Springheel" 
and  "Ripper."  For  the  properly  inquiring  spirit, 
however,  Whitechapel  still  holds  its  individual  flavor, 
clear  and  strong.  It  is  to  Whitechapel  that  I  owe 


23 8  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

the  richest  evening  of  my  London  life.  An  even- 
ing so  rich  in  color  and  character  that  I  can  scarce 
give  more  than  a  faint  sketch  of  it. 

That  my  introduction  to  the  beating  heart  of 
Whitechapel  should  have  come  as  it  did  is  part  of 
the  irony  of  things,  the  irony  of  which  that  Art  Gal- 
lery is  a  note.  It  was  neither  a  coster  from  the  Mile 
End  Road,  nor  a  Hooligan  from  Lambeth  Walk, 
nor  yet  Phil  May  and  his  cigar  that  lit  the  way  to 
Whitechapel  for  me.  No;  it  was  none  of  these.  It 
was,  instead,  the  most  dapper  dilettante  of  my 
whilom  acquaintance. 

For  the  sake  of  the  ridiculous  contrast,  let  me  em- 
phasize him  a  little.  He  was  bloodless  of  com- 
plexion, small  in  stature,  delicate  in  hands  and  feet 
and  speech.  He  had  been  a  tutor  to  the  younger 
sons  of  the  aristocracy;  he  was  of  the  tutor  type 
wedded  to  the  dilettante  type.  His  English  was 
beautiful  in  intonation  and  sweetness  until  you  be- 
gan to  tire  of  the  ineffable  evenness  of  it.  He  had 
been  much  on  the  European  continent;  he  was  un- 
English  in  his  manners  and  in  his  artistic  likes.  He 
had  written  a  mild  monograph  on  Watteau.  Un- 
English  as  his  ideals  were  in  art,  he  was  utterly  Eng- 
lish on  other  details;  he  scouted  life  in  Paris,  or 
French  cooking  and  the  like,  with  the  blighting 
phrase:  "We  don't  care  much  for  Paris."  That 
was  his  sweeping  sentence  on  all  alien  things :  "We 
don't  care  much  for  it,"  meaning  "We  English,"  and 
lordlywise  arrogating  to  himself  the  expression  of 
All  England's  opinion.  He  had  a  little  Vandyke 
beard,  his  hands  were  quite  white,  and  he  wore  a  soft 
hat  of  the  Hombourg  style.  When  he  was  not  de-  - 


LONDON  239 

bating  the  advisability  of  abolishing  the  House  of 
Commons  in  favor  of  a  second  House  of  Lords,  he 
was,  I  presumed,  considering  the  merits  and  dements 
of  such  American  millionaires  as  Morgan  and 
Yerkes  from  the  point  of  view  of  one  anxious  to  sell 
the  newest  discovery  in  Gainsboroughs.  When  he 
approached  me,  on  that  afternoon,  I  thought  surely 
it  was  for  the  purpose  of  sounding  my  peculiar  igno- 
rance of  both  these  estimable  collectors;  I  was  pre- 
pared to  tell  him  that  I  had  met  Mrs.  Yerkes,  by  way 
of  Van  Beers,  and  that  I  had  once  stroked  a  collie 
that  had  belonged  to  Mr.  Morgan. 

But  it  was  not  of  plutocrats  or  pictures  that  the 
Dapper  Dilettante  was  then  musing.  "Do  you 
care,"  said  he,  ufor  boxing?"  You  may  imagine  my 
surprise.  "There  is  to  be  some  boxing,"  he  went  on, 
"to-night,  in  Whitechapel."  He  showed  me  a  let- 
ter from  the  manager  of  a  hall.  It  was  a  delicious 
example  in  the  non-committal.  "Yes,"  it  ran,  "there 
will  be  an  Entertainment  this  evening,  and  we  shall 
be  glad  to  see  you."  So  non-committal  was  the  note 
that  we  hesitated  a  little;  it  seemed  hardly  worth 
braving  Whitechapel  only  to  find  some  dull  music- 
hall  program  in  performance.  Finally  we  deter- 
mined on  risking  it. 

THE  tube  shot  us  from  Park  Lane's  gateway,  the 
Marble  Arch,  to  the  Bank,  and  thence  we  fared  by 
omnibus  to  Wonderland.  That  was  the  actual  name, 
Wonderland.  The  Wonderland  is  in  Whitechapel. 
It  had  been  a  music  hall,  and  for  aught  I  know  it  may 
be  one  again.  But  on  that  evening  there  was  another 
sort  of  entertainment. 


24o  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

The  moment  we  entered  the  outer  doors  we  were 
conspicuous.  We  were  utoffs";  there  was  no  dis- 
guising it;  we  were  "toffs."  We  wore  collars.  Also 
we  were  prepared  to  pay  two  shillings  for  one  even- 
ing's entertainment.  We  were  importantly,  impres- 
sively handed  from  one  functionary  to  another. 
These  functionaries  were  all  intensely  Hebraic,  in- 
tensely polite,  intensely  pressed  for  time,  intensely 
glittering  under  a  huge  star  pinned  over  a  breast. 
All  about  us  pressed  and  swore  and  smoked  the  bul- 
warks of  the  British  people,  thick-set  bullet-headed 
costers  and  sporting  amateurs  from  every  one  of  the 
plainer  walks  of  life,  and  the  be-starred  functionaries 
did  not  mean  to  let  a  single  one  of  these  bulwarks  do 
anything  but  enter  and  join  the  waves  of  smoke 
within.  So  we  were  bustled  to  our  places  speedily. 
Outside,  the  mob  still  crushed  and  jostled;  gradually 
the  hall  filled  to  the  very  rafters. 

We  found  ourselves  in  the  front  row,  facing  the 
ring.  All  about  us  tobacco  smoke  hung  like  a  fog. 
Through  that  fog  one  saw  the  hundreds  of  eager 
faces,  and  heard  the  buzz  of  cockney  speech.  The 
collars  in  the  place  might  have  been  counted  on  one's 
fingers.  The  fashionable  neckwear  was  of  cloth,  dim 
in  hue,  and  knotted  loosely  at  chin,  under  the  ear, 
anywhere.  Derby  hats  or  dicers  were  as  rare  as 
collars;  caps  of  all  the  sombre,  indefinite  tints  pre- 
vailed. Smoke  everywhere.  The  faces  were 
weather-beaten,  town-toughened,  hard,  brutal,  too, 
but  not  bad.  Contrasting  with  this  assemblage  a 
typical  American  counterpart,  I  noted  that  the  well- 
to-do  patron  was  conspicuously  scarce  in  this  W'hite- 
chapel  hall.  There  was  nothing  to  correspond  to 


LONDON  241 

the  stout,  sleek  persons  who  on  the  American  side 
make  up  the  huge  world  where  politics,  pugilism  and 
gambling  meet  and  mingle.  That  well-fed,  smoothly- 
dressed  type  was  not  in  evidence.  No ;  this  was  the 
Great  Unwashed,  the  British  Public  from  the  bar- 
rows of  Covent  Garden,  the  docks  of  the  Thames, 
and  the  sweatshops  of  Whitechapel.  The  only  touch 
that  reminded  one  of  America  was  supplied  by  the 
fact  that  the  proprietor  of  the  hall  was  a  Jew,  and 
nearly  all  the  attendants  were  of  his  race. 

The  ring  was  strictly  for  use ;  there  was  nothing 
ornamental  about  it.  The  attendants,  with  their 
towels  and  sponges,  wore  simply  trousers  and  under- 
shirts ;  there  were  few  refinements.  It  appeared  that 
the  entertainment  had  already  begun.  It  was  dur- 
ing an  interval  between  two  bouts  that  we  had  taken 
our  seats  and  begun  our  observations.  Now  there 
loomed  upon  us  a  memorable  figure.  It  was  the 
Master  of  Ceremonies. 

This  Master  of  Ceremonies  brought  back  the  days 
of  the  Chairman  in  the  old  Music  Halls  before  the 
program  came  in.  If  you  want  to  know  how  it  was 
in  the  days  of  yore  in  Music-hall-land,  your  only 
chance  is  to  seek  out  some  such  haunt  of  the  pugilistic 
British  public  as  we  found  in  Whitechapel  that  night. 
The  Master  of  Ceremonies  is  called  generally  the 
M.C.  for  short.  Resplendent  in  evening  clothes  and 
a  huge  Parisian  diamond  star  on  his  breast,  he 
mounted  the  platform  and  held  up  his  hand.  Gradu- 
ally the  cockney  rumblings  died  down. 

"Next,  I  'ave  the  pleasure  of  interducin'  Cockney 
Joe  and  Bill  Smith.  Cockney  Joe  on  my  left;  Bill 
Smith  on  my  right.  Cockney  Joe  of  Camberwell; 


VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

Bill  Smith  of  Putney.  You  all  knows  'em,  and  what 
they  can  do.  Six  rounds.  Referee  and  timekeeper 
as  before!" 

Whereupon  two  awkward  looking  gentlemen 
slouch  across  the  ring,  doff  a  garment  or  two,  chiefly 
consisting  of  neck-cloth,  shake  hands  and  begin. 
The  science  is  nothing  wonderful,  but  the  genuine- 
ness of  the  encounter  there  is  no  gainsaying.  The 
fighting  is  for  blood  and  verdict,  not  for  money  or 
chicane.  All  through  the  rounds  the  cheering  and 
shouting  are  as  interesting  as  is  the  actual  pugilism. 
One  thing  is  unmistakable,  the  British  delight  in  fair- 
play.  Good  points  are  roundly  cheered,  attempts  at 
wrestling  or  staying  too  long  in  the  clinches  are  jeered 
at.  Some  four  or  five  of  the  six-round  bouts  are 
fought  preliminary  to  the  great  event  of  the  evening. 
Some  are  between  youngsters  still  in  their  'teens 
apparently,  some  between  veritable  ancients.  The 
names  of  the  contestants  are  in  themselves  a  treat. 
I  wish  I  could  remember  them.  One  encounter 
was  between  a  staunch  youngster  and  a  relic  of  other 
days,  whom  the  M.C.  introduced  for  the  great  work 
he  had  done  years  ago,  when  he  had  once  stood  up  to 
Jem  Mace.  Well-preserved  as  this  ancient  seemed 
when  he  stripped,  he  fought  so  wildly,  was  so  soon 
visibly  exhausted,  that  the  decision,  in  mercy  to  him, 
was  very  quickly  given  in  his  opponent's  favor.  But 
how  they  cheered !  And  how  quaint  sounded  always 
that  stereotyped  monition  from  the  Master  of  Cere- 
monies: 

"Now,  then,  hands  together  for  the  plucky  loser!" 
In  between  the  rounds,  waiters  of  all  sorts  and  con- 
ditions circulated  between  the  benches.     Concerning 


LONDON  243 

the  viands  and  liquors  so  dispensed,  the  Dapper 
Dilettante  had  already  warned  me.  He  intimated 
that  it  was  dangerous  to  life  and  peace  not  to  buy  of 
the  offerings.  Yet  I  determined  to  resist,  if  possible. 
And  I  must  set  it  down  in  justice  to  the  Great  Ma- 
jority on  that  occasion  that,  though  I  was  coward 
and  niggard  enough  to  buy  nothing,  I  was  yet  al- 
lowed to  escape  without  so  much  as  a  sarcasm  for 
punishment.  Especially  had  I  been  warned  anent  the 
stewed  eels.  To  that  warning  I  would,  indeed,  add 
my  own  now  and  here. 

Save  for  the  hardened  adventurer  into  the  regions 
of  Darkest  Cooking,  the  stewed  eel  of  Whitechapel 
is  not  to  be  commended.  I  am  not  narrow  in  my  ap- 
petites; the  nationality  of  a  dainty  never  confounds 
me;  I  would  as  soon  eat  birds'  nests  as  frogs,  if 
daintily  presented;  but  at  the  stewed  eel  I  admit  I 
quailed.  I  shall  not  try  to  describe  its  gray  and 
vague  appearance.  I  thought  of  London  fog  in  pro- 
cess of  liquefaction;  and  I  thought,  also,  of  a  melan- 
choly oyster  I  once  absorbed  from  a  barrow  under 
the  Brixton  railway-arch  to  the  sound  of  a  deranged 
cornet.  I  recall  the  phrase  of  a  famous  epicure,  but 
I  recall,  equally,  my  own  emotions,  and  I  repeat  that 
there  is  nothing  more  dismal  in  life  than  to  eat  a 
bad  oyster  to  the  tone  of  trumpets.  All  these  chaotic 
shreds  of  thought  assailed  me  while  the  hoarse  waiter 
held  me  the  cup  of  stewed  eels;  stoutly  I  resisted  him 
and  his  temptings.  Not  that  I  would  decry  the  eel 
as  food.  By  no  means.  I  have  eaten  smoked  eels  in 
Pomerania  that  were  as  sweet  as  the  whitest  of  flesh 
and  exactest  art  in  smoking  could  make  them;  I  have 
enjoyed  broiled  eels  from  the  Connecticut;  and  I  am 


a44  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

at  all  times  ready  to  assert  my  appreciation  of  those 
dishes.  But  the  stewed  eel  of  Whitechapel  ranks, 
with  me,  as  does  the  lowest  ratio  in  the  following 
anecdote : 

An  honest  grocerman  to  a  would-be  purchaser  of 
eggs,  thus:  "Eggs,  sir?  Yes,  sir.  Which'll  you 
'ave,  sir,  country  eggs  at  fourpence,  fresh  eggs  at 
thrippence,  Danish  eggs  at  tuppence,  or  The  Egg  at 
a  penny?"  With  "The  Egg  at  a  penny"  I  must  here- 
after rank  the  stewed  eel  of  Whitechapel  as  "The 
Eel." 

Nor  did  the  constant  flow  of  "bitters"  lure  me. 
I  feasted  on  quite  other  things.  On  the  untram- 
meled  humanity  all  about  me,  on  the  appetite  for 
stewed  eels  displayed  by  the  majority,  on  the  thirst 
for  bitter  beer  everywhere  prevalent,  on  the  solidity 
of  the  tobacco  qualms.  Over  and  above  the  chatter- 
ing and  clinking  came  the  voice  of  the  waiters  with 
their  eels  and  their  beer.  This  was  their  formula, 
full  of  delicate  imagery,  smacking  of  flattery,  tickling 
the  vanity  of  the  caps  and  the  neck-cloths : 

"I'm  'ere,  toffs,  I'm 'ere!" 

The  beautiful  simplicity  of  that  cry!  Slang,  the 
world  over,  cuts  always  straight  to  the  center  of 
things.  It  is  folly  to  think  that  the  slang  of  one 
country  is  especially  ahead  of  that  of  another.  Con- 
sider our  own  famous  political  phrase  "What  are  we 
here  for?"  It  has  its  counterpart  in  the  brief  ob- 
viousness of: 

"I'm 'ere,  toffs,  I'm  'ere!" 

Let  the  word  "toff"  be  spoken  in  anger,  in  insult, 
and  what  a  chasm  it  at  once  opens  between  the  gen- 
tleman of  the  neck-cloth  and  the  gentleman  of  collars 


LONDON  245 

and  cuffs !  But  spoken  thus,  in  delicate  appeal,  what 
soothing  balm  to  the  egoism  of  even  the  neck-cloth ! 
The  main  affair  of  the  evening  was  for  a  matter 
of  ten  rounds  between  one  Jewy  Cook  and  a  Gentile 
whose  first  name  only  I  recall.  It  was  Ernest,  short- 
ened by  all  into  "Ernie."  Everybody,  in  this  bout  as 
in  all  the  others,  knew  everybody  else.  It  was  "Go 
it  Ernie!"  "Now  then  Jewy!"  all  the  time.  The 
genial  enthusiast  who  yells  "Kill  him,  kill  him!"  was 
not  absent.  He  is  the  same  all  over  the  world,  in 
Whitechapel  or  Coney  Island.  But  the  order  held 
by  the  Master  of  Ceremonies  in  the  face  of  these 
apparent  ruffians — for  to  the  hasty  judgment  of  sleek 
citizens  from  other  grades  in  life  they  may  well  have 
seemed  only  ruffians — was  something  admirable. 
He  quelled  the  fiercest  shouts,  the  deepest  mutter- 
ings.  Before  this  main  bout  he  showed  his  high  au- 
thority sharply:  "All  gentlemen  will  now  stop 
smokin'  so  all  present  may  be  able  to  see  the  event 
of  the  evening,  ten  rounds  between  Jewy  Cook  and 
Ernie  Soandso."  This  was  indeed  a  desperate  bat- 
tle. The  Jew  was  bull-necked,  broad-shouldered, 
huge;  he  looked  easily  the  winner.  His  opponent 
was  lithe,  taller,  thinner.  He  smiled  constantly;  the 
Jew  looked  like  murder.  Ernie  had  the  science — 
that  was  plain  from  the  start.  The  Jew  meant  des- 
perate mischief;  he  went  brutally  at  the  hammer- 
and-tongs  game;  more  than  once  it  looked  as  if  he 
had  the  other  at  his  mercy.  But  skill  kept  Ernie  just 
safe,  and  all  the  time  the  bigger  fellow,  the  huger 
machine,  the  fiercer  fury,  was  losing  steam  and 
stamina.  Ernie  showed  his  mettle  constantly,  and 
gradually,  if  surely,  the  balance  of  effective  blows 


246  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

was  to  his  credit.  The  Jew  took  refuge  in  desper- 
ate, time-killing  clinches — so  much  so,  that,  for  the 
first  time  that  evening,  the  referee,  a  plain,  stout 
person,  had  to  step  into  the  ring  and  constantly 
separate  the  combatants  by  passing  between  them. 

The  public  was  well  divided  in  its  favor.  Both 
men  had  great  records  locally.  My  next  neighbor, 
on  the  other  side  from  the  Dapper  Dilettante,  was, 
strangely  enough,  a  huge  Frenchman.  He  was  con- 
stantly needing  my  help  to  tell  him  who  the  contest- 
ants were,  and  constantly,  when  the  main  bout  ar- 
rived, assuring  me  that  Jewey  Cook  would  half  kill 
his  opponent.  But  he  was  destined  to  disappoint- 
ment. By  his  science  and  staying,  his  keeping  his 
head  and  not  allowing  himself  to  be  borne  down  in 
the  last  clinching  rushes  of  the  now  maddened  bull 
he  was  fighting,  Ernie  obtained  the  verdict  to  the 
roar  of  a  hallfull  of  cheers.  Then,  upon  the  stereo- 
typed request  of  the  Master  of  Ceremonies,  a  strange 
thing  happened.  For  the  loser  there  came  something 
between  silence  and  hisses.  I  knew  well  enough  what 
it  meant.  The  British  public  simply  had  not  liked 
the  way  Cook  had  fought.  He  had  been  unfair  in 
his  clinching  tactics,  and  they  knew  it.  That  was 
what  they  resented.  But  the  Master  of  Ceremonies 
motioned  for  silence.  He  introduced  Mr.  Jacobs, 
the  proprietor  of  the  hall,  a  youthful,  keen-faced 
fellow  of  Cook's  breed. 

"You've  seen  many  hard  fights  Cook  has  fought  in 
this  hall,  gents,  and  you've  never  seen  him  refuse  a 
fair  fight  in  his  life;  you  never  saw  him  shirk  his 
work,  and  you've  seen  him  meet  many  good  men  and 
beat  them,  in  this  very  hall;  and  I'm  surprised  the 


LONDON  247 

way  you  treats  him  when  he  loses.  Gents,  all  hands 
together  for  the  loser." 

Put  in  that  way,  and  reminded  of  his  past  per- 
formances, the  public  put  its  hands  together.  But, 
pace  Mr.  Jacobs,  that  was  not  the  point,  and  he 
must  have  known  it.  It  was  the  fight  they  had  just 
seen  that  they  resented  the  methods  of.  And  when 
the  British  public  resents,  in  fisticuffs  or  theatricals,  it 
hisses. 

It  was  an  incident  not  down  on  the  program,  how- 
ever, that  was  most  memorable.  About  midway  of 
the  preliminary  bouts,  after  the  Master  of  Cere- 
monies had  announced  the  names  of  the  two  coming 
contestants,  there  ran  through  the  hall  first  groans, 
then  hisses.  It  developed  that  one  of  the  contestants 
was  a  substitute.  The  name  on  the  program  was 
that  of  a  public  favorite ;  the  public  wanted  him,  not 
another,  or  they  would  know  the  reason  why.  The 
Master  of  Ceremonies  explained  at  great  length. 
The  proprietor,  Mr.  Jacobs,  always  tried  to  keep 
faith  with  his  patrons;  he  held  to  his  promises  in- 
variably. But  in  this  case  they  were  unexpectedly 
disappointed.  The  boxer  in  question  had  been  of- 
fered a  chance  to  go  on  at  the  National  Sporting 
Club  the  following  Saturday,  provided  he  missed  to- 
night's engagement.  It  meant  twenty-five  pounds  to 
him — that  was  what  the  National  Sporting  Club 
offered  him.  After  the  Master  of  Ceremonies,  Mr. 
Jacobs  himself  stepped  upon  the  platform  and  re- 
peated these  assurances,  with  the  additional  fact 
that  to  prove  his  good  faith  he  had  persuaded  the 
boxer  to  appear  before  them  that  evening  and  speak 
for  himself  and  testify  to  the  facts  already  stated. 


248  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

It  was  all  very  entertaining,  to  the  complete  outsider. 
But  suddenly,  in  the  midst  of  Mr.  Jacobs'  explana- 
tion, a  voice  cried  out  from  somewhere  in  the  hall, 
rudely  and  profanely  announcing  that  it  was  all  a 
skin-game.  Mr.  Jacobs  went  white,  but  said  noth- 
ing just  then.  The  boxer  was  introduced;  shuffled 
from  one  foot  to  the  other;  made  his  halting,  though 
evidently  veracious  explanation,  insisting  chiefly  on 
the  twenty-five  pounds  at  stake,  an  argument  that 
did  not  fail  to  move  his  hearers.  They  let  him  es- 
cape with  a  hearty  cheer.  But  Mr.  Jacobs,  still 
white,  held  up  his  hand  again. 

uYou  all  heard,"  he  said,  ua  remark  that  was 
passed  in  this  hall  while  I  was  speakin'  a  while  ago, 
and  you  all  heard  the  meanin'  of  them  remarks. 
And  I  want  to  tell  you  that  I  know  who  passed  that 
remark,  and  though  he's  got  more  money  than  me,  I 
want  to  tell  you  that  he  don't  never  come  in  this 
hall  again."  He  glared  at  a  benevolent  Hebrew 
sitting  exactly  opposite  us,  next  the  ringside.  "I 
mean  Mr.  Mordecai,  and  he  knows  I  mean  what  I 
says." 

Whereon  the  fight  proceeded.  It  was  entirely 
unimportant.  The  substitute,  an  Irish  lad  with  red 
hair,  his  name  Fitzgerald,  was  plucky,  but  nothing 
more.  The  public  cheered  the  loser  heartily.  Mean- 
while I  considered  the  face  of  Mr.  Mordecai.  If 
ever  a  person  looked  the  one  unlikely  to  have  made 
the  remark  that  all  had  heard,  it  was  Mr.  Mordecai. 
Of  all  the  faces  in  that  room,  his  was  the  most  dis- 
tinctly benevolent;  the  face  of  a  kindly,  shrewd  He- 
brew who  had  amassed  money  in  trade.  He  seemed 
a  very  John  Wanamaker  of  Whitechapel.  About 


LONDON  249 

him  buzzed  friends;  conversation  and  explanation 
buzzed  all  about  him;  it  was  evident  that  tremendous 
matters  were  in  the  air.  He  looked  like  an  injured 
child.  His  mild  eyes,  his  white  whiskers,  all  seemed 
to  plead  his  entire  ignorance  of  what  the  disturbance 
was  about.  The  white  heat  of  passion  was  all  this 
time  dying  from  Mr.  Jacobs,  and  the  calm  light  of 
reason,  to  say  nothing  of  friendly  counsel,  began  to 
exert  sway.  So  that  at  the  end  of  the  bout  wherein 
the  red  Fitzgerald  suffered  defeat,  the  public  was 
again  warned  into  silence. 

uYou  all  hears  the  remark  I  passes  in  this  hall  con- 
cerning Mr.  Mordecai,"  said  Mr.  Jacobs.  "I  finds 
I  makes  a  mistake  concerning  who  passed  the  remark 
made  while  I  was  speakin',  and  the  remark  was  not 
made  by  Mr.  Mordecai.  I  wishes  to  state  that  I 
now  knows  who  made  that  remark  and  I'll  settle  with 
him  later.  But,  me  bein'  a  gentleman,  and  havin' 
made  the  statement  I  did  touching  on  Mr.  Mordecai, 
I  will  now  apologize  before  you  all,  and  Mr.  Mor- 
decai, also  bein'  a  gentleman,  will  accept  my  apology 
before  you  all,  and  bein'  gentlemen  both  we  will 
drink  each  others'  healths,  after  which  we  passes 
the  bottle  among  you." 

And  there,  before  all  the  hall,  the  hawkeyed  Mr. 
Jacobs  and  the  benevolent  Mr.  Mordecai  drank  to 
each  other  from  glasses  that  had  been  filled  for 
them  out  of  one  bottle,  and  the  entire  hall  roared  in 
cheers,  while  the  whisky  bottle  was  seized  to  pass 
from  mouth  to  mouth  and  become  the  occasion  of  as 
near  a  riot  as  the  hall  saw  that  night.  Finally  one  of 
the  waiters,  so  that  the  business  of  the  evening  might 
go  on,  was  forced  to  rescue  the  bottle  and  its  dregs 


250  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

from  the  very  lips  of  the  thirsty  soul  who  was  strug- 
gling for  its  retention. 

So,  in  peace  and  perfect  amity,  ended  this  lovely 
episode.  It  was  one  of  the  most  delicious  expositions 
of  gentility  in  my  experience.  The  hard  emphasis 
on  the  "gentleman"  was  so  eloquent  of  the  ambition 
of  even  Whitechapel. 

When  all  was  over,  the  Dapper  Dilettante  and  I, 
making  for  the  door,  were  suddenly  overtaken  by  a 
great  rush  and  trampling,  a  shouting  and  crying. 
We  thought  that,  after  all,  after  the  gentility,  and  the 
politeness,  we  were  in  for  a  riot.  Had  the  police  in- 
terfered, at  the  very  close  of  it  all?  But  no;  a  be- 
starred  attendant  took  us,  rushed  us  safely  to  the 
street,  and  thence  we  beheld  the  flying  wedge  that 
followed;  it  was  merely  the  British  public  bringing 
forth  upon  their  backs  "Ernie"  the  victor,  in  triumph ! 

The  morrow  might  bring  Watteau,  but  what  was 
Watteau  to  Whitechapel?  I  did  not  philosophize 
upon  this  to  the  Dapper  Dilettante  as  we  proceeded 
home,  but  I  was  muchly  minded  to  do  so.  We  had 
been  in  the  flesh  and  blood  of  men  and  matters;  the 
frills,  in  the  dimness  of  the  night  we  entered,  looked 
petty  and  puerile. 

IV 

A    LONDON   SUNDAY 

IF  there  is  one  day  more  difficult  than  another  to 
fill  with  gayety  in  London,  it  is  Sunday.  Of  the  pos- 
sible escapes  from  a  London  Sunday,  it  must  serve 
my  present  purpose  to  choose  but  one.  If  my  choice 


LONDON  251 

is  what  is  known  simply  as  a  day  on  the  river,  that  is 
because  it  still  remains,  in  the  simplicity  of  its  out- 
door diversion,  most  typical  of  English  life.  As 
the  Briton  has  brought  to  perfection  most  forms  of 
sport,  so  does  he  bring  to  boating  on  the  river  all  his 
genius  for  fresh  air  and  exercise.  Though  the 
Thames  could  well,  in  its  upper  reaches,  be  counted 
as  a  tenth  the  width  of  the  Mississippi,  it  remains 
for  all  London,  and  all  England,  "the"  river.  If 
you  were,  on  the  eve  of  an  excursion  to  Windsor,  to 

IStaines,  to  Maidenhead,  or  to  Oxford,  to  declare 
you  were  going  "up  the  Thames,"  the  brand  of  inex- 
perience would  be  on  you  like  a  shot. 

London,  on  a  Sunday  morning,  is  a  city  devoid  of 
cabs  and  omnibusses,  and  populated  only  by  persons 
standing  on  corners  and  furiously  whistling  for  cabs. 
At  ten  on  a  week-day  morning  you  may  see  shopmen 
taking  down  shutters  all  over  the  West  End;  on 
Sundays  things  are  even  later.  Americans  could 
do  a  day's  business  in  London  before  London  was 
out  of  bed.  No  wonder  the  British  is  lagging  behind 
the  American  and  German  empires. 

At  Paddington,  that  Sunday,  one  saw  that  the 
river  was  to  have  a  very  big  day  indeed.  .  Public 
cabs  and  private  conveyances  drove  up  every  in- 
stant; the  platforms  beside  the  trains  were  crowded 
with  men  in  light  flannels,  and  white  shoes,  and  girls 
in  muslins. and  flannels.  Almost  every  conveyance, 
every  man,  carried  huge  hampers  of  wicker.  These 
were  filled  with  the  day's  luncheons,  to  be  taken  under 
the  leafy  river  banks.  A  tremendous  business  is  done 
in  these  hampers.  Almost  every  caterer  or  grocer 
sells  you  one  all  filled  with  food  and  drink;  the  rail- 


252  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

way  company  itself  provides  them ;  you  restoring  the 
empty  hamper  when  you  return  to  the  station  in  the 
evening.  Taking  a  hamper  has  much  to  recommend 
it;  you  can  lunch  as  appetite  dictates,  and  choose 
your  scene  for  the  meal.  Lounging  on  pillows  in  a 
skiff  moored  under  the  shade  of  Cliveden  Woods 
has  its  charms  for  the  gourmet.  Yet  a  hamper  also 
constitutes  a  hindrance.  We  chose  to  do  without 
one,  relying  upon  the  little  inn  at  Cookham. 

The  express  reached  Maidenhead  in  something 
under  an  hour.  The  walk  to  Boulter's  Lock  is  a  mat- 
ter of  fifteen  minutes.  On  the  way  we  crossed  a 
bridge  where  a  stone  marked  "twenty-six  miles  to 
Hyde  Park  Corner."  Just  a  delightful  morning's 
spin  on  a  bicycle,  some  hours  on  the  river,  and  home 
in  the  evening,  without  need  of  lamplighting  until 
nine  o'clock.  Oh,  the  paradise  for  wheels  this  Eng- 
land is !  But  my  wheel  was  rusting  somewhere  in 
Maryland,  and  they  put  too  many  lumbering  con- 
trivances on  English  wheels  to  tempt  one  into  hiring 
one.  In  boats,  however,  it  is  very  different.  You 
can't  easily  beat  the  pleasure-skiffs  that  ply  upon  the 
Thames.  You  have  fine  thwarts,  plenty  of  room, 
perfectly  dry  floors,  and  a  luxuriantly  cushioned 
space  for  the  drone  of  the  party  to  sit  and  manipu- 
late the  steering  ropes.  The  alternative  to  a  skiff  is 
the  punt,  very  long,  flat  bottomed,  and  with  blunt 
ends.  These  are  propelled  by  a  huge  pole,  and  one 
must  stand  up  to  do  the  poling.  Punts  are  very  popu- 
lar and  comfortable,  but  we  chose  a  skiff. 

The  river,  wrhere  we  first  put  our  oars  into  it,  was 
alive  with  craft  of  every  sort.  Launches  and  small 
steamboats  struggled  and  jostled  about  in  merry 


LONDON  253 

competition.  No  sooner  had  we  reached  a  bit  of 
open  than  we  saw  the  press  and  scrimmage  that  de- 
noted a  lock.  It  was  Boulter's  Lock.  We  hurried 
toward  the  lock  as  fast  as  possible.  No  rule  of  the 
river  was  discernable.  Asked  upon  this  point,  the 
boatman,  as  he  shoved  our  skiff  into  the  water,  had 
merely  said:  "No,  there's  no  rule  on  a  day  like 
this,  sir.  You  just  does  the  best  you  can,  and  you'll 
find  it's  a  good-natured  crowd."  That  was  true. 
There  seemed  little  system,  but  much  good  nature. 

Rose-covered  houses  of  beautiful  gray  stone  faced 
the  river  everywhere;  constantly  one  had  glimpses  of 
that  indoor  and  outdoor  comfort  that  English  coun- 
try houses  so  excel  in.  Automobiles  whizzed  by  on 
the  highway  beside  the  left  bank.  A  constant  pro- 
cession of  persons  strolling  and  riding  and  watching 
the  crafts  grew  closer  and  more  crowded  as  the 
lock  was  neared.  The  lock  proclaimed  itself  by  the 
sudden  acceleration  and  gathering  closer  of  all  the 
boats,  by  the  narrowing  of  the  stream,  and  presently 
by  sight  of  the  huge  wooden  gates  that  shut  in  or  out 
the  water.  One  began  to  struggle  for  the  front. 
Presently  one  was  inextricably  jammed  in  the  proces- 
sion. One's  bow  lapped  upon  the  stern  of  a  punt; 
one's  own  elbow  rested  upon  the  nose  of  a  following 
skiff,  and  a  launch  hung  broadside  against  one's  row- 
lock. Oars,  of  course,  had  long  since  been  aban- 
doned. Progress  was  made  partly  by  using  the  boat- 
hook  as  a  paddle,  partly  by  hooking  one's  self  to  the 
wall  or  to  the  craft  ahead.  If  one  were  not  afraid 
of  sudden  jerks  and  crushings,  one  clung  to  the  stern- 
rail  of  a  large  launch,  and  so  dragged  in  its  wake. 
Shouts  grew  distinct  as  one  came  closer  to  the  lock; 


254  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

one  could  see  the  lockkeeper  and  his  assistants  strug- 
gling and  steaming  in  efforts  to  bring  order  out  of 
chaos.  "Come  on  there,  now,  with  the  skiffs!  Keep 
back  with  that  launch !  Hurry  on,  Oona !  That'll 
do;  that's  all.  No  more  now;  no,  sir,  you're  too 
late;  next  time  for  you,  sir!"  And  the  gates,  opened 
to  let  the  first  comers  through,  close  in  the  teeth  of 
the  second  batch  of  expectants.  One  had  to  have 
patience.  The  thing  to  do  was  to  stay  in  as  safe  and 
good  a  position  as  possible,  and  give  one's  self  up 
to  observation  of  the  picture. 

Before  one  loomed  the  lock,  a  narrowing  portal 
of  stone  and  two  huge  wooden  gates.  Above  was 
the  lockkeeper's  house,  of  grey  stone,  hidden  in 
clambering  roses.  The  notice-boards  of  the  Thames 
Conservancy  stood  about  rich  in  explanations  and 
monitions.  The  Thames  Conservancy  is  the  body 
that  keeps  "the  river"  and  its  denizens  in  order. 
And  such  order!  An  apple  pie,  sugared  so  as  you 
could  write  your  name  on  it,  is  but  slatternly  in  com- 
parison. It  may  seem  to  those  familiar  with  the 
boundless  fine  freedom,  not  to  say  unkemptness,  of 
our  Hudson,  our  Delaware,  our  Merrimack,  our 
Connecticut  and  all  our  other  rivers,  that  this  order- 
liness of  the  Thames  is  a  trifle  petty,  a  bit  old-maid- 
ish. But  there  is  no  denying  the  result  of  all  this 
scrupulous  care  and  good  order  is  a  river-traffic  un- 
excelled in  entertainment  and  popularity.  It  is  an 
application,  to  aquatics,  of  the  military  precision  of 
Germany.  What  England  lacks  in  perfection  of 
army  and  navy  management,  she  gains  in  her  sport- 
ing details. 

It  is  a  crowd,  waiting  before  the  lock,  that  aver- 


LONDON  255 

ages  pleasantly  in  attire  and  behavior.  Maidenhead 
and  these  contiguous  reaches  of  the  river  are  too  far 
from  London  to  allow  of  the  "rotter"  or  the 
"bounder"  to  predominate;  the  undesirable  elements 
are  absent.  The  men  are  cool  looking  and  comfort- 
able in  light  colored  flannels,  belted  and  straw-hat- 
ted, as  Panama  hats  are  in  every  other  boat,  upon 
both  sexes.  But  the  typical  English  girl  does  not 
suit  the  Panama;  it  needs  something  more  of  the 
dusky  Spanish  type.  Occasionally,  one  sees  a  Jap- 
anese parasol.  The  varied  colors  and  patterns  of 
these  are  gorgeously  brilliant  under  the  cool  greens 
of  the  shading  trees.  Never  was  there  such  comfort 
in  small  boats  as  on  this  river.  The  man  is  stripped 
for  his  work  of  rowing  or  poling,  but  his  fair  es- 
cort— what  a  picture  of  cool  comfort  she  presents! 
She  leans  into  the  cushions,  stretched  out,  almost 
asleep,  barely  holding  the  sunshade  upright.  Cush- 
ions for  her  head,  her  shoulders,  her  feet.  Yet  the 
boat  is  of  the  ordinary  single  scull  St.  Lawrence 
skiff  type.  Yes,  in  the  way  of  river  comfort,  all  the 
world  may  still  go  to  school  in  England. 

On  the  larger  launches  orchestras  are  playing 
from  the  newest  operetta,  while  elaborate  ladies, 
dressed  as  for  drawing-rooms,  lounge  in  wicker  arm- 
chairs and  bronzed  men,  old  and  young,  smoke  ciga- 
rettes and  make  heavy  efforts  at  doing  the  dolce  far 
niente.  Occasionally  a  fusillade  of  champagne  corks 
punctuates  the  music,  and  starts  jealousy  where  it 
does  not  produce  gayety.  At  last,  comes  a  wel- 
come shout,  "Stand  by!  Hold  fast!"  The  lock  is 
to  open,  and  one  must  prepare  for  the  first  rush  of 
the  released  water.  A  surge,  a  bump,  a  close  haul 


256  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

upon  one's  boathook  which  is  held  tight  over  a  nail 
in  the  wall,  and,  with  laughter  and  shouting,  all  the 
chance  of  danger  is  over.  Slowly  the  boats  going  in 
the  other  direction  file  down  the  narrow  lane  one 
has  left,  and  slowly,  when  the  way  is  clear,  one 
scrambles  and  pushes  into  the  lock  that  one  has  so 
long  lingered  before.  Again  a  wait  ensues,  while  the 
water  slowly  rises,  and  one's  horizon  changes  from 
mere  wet  walls  to  the  boundless  green  of  the  fields 
and  the  hills. 

One  has  been  known,  on  crowded  occasions  such  as 
this,  to  spend  eighty  minutes  at  Boulter's  Lock.  But 
an  end  comes,  even  in  England.  The  packed  mob 
pours,  at  the  given  word  and  the  swung  gate, 
through  the  narrow  portal,  and  gradually,  past  ivied 
houseboats  and  leafy  cottages,  into  the  open  water 
where  sculling  is  once  more  possible,  and  where  each 
boat  can  take  its  own  individual  course.  Some  pull 
for  the  overhanging  boughs  of  the  trees,  where  the 
boat  can  be  moored,  and  in  the  cool,  dark  quiet,  a 
lunch  can  be  enjoyed,  or  a  doze,  or  a  chat,  a  smoke, 
or  any  form,  in  fact,  of  loafing.  There  are  quiet 
pools  where  lilies  lie,  white  and  yellow,  and  islands 
along  whose  shores  shy  moorhens  dart  in  and  out. 
Poppies  are  scarlet  on  the  lowland  bank;  the  other 
bank  rises  sheer  from  river  to  sky,  one  mighty  mass 
of  wooded  green.  These  are  the  Cliveden  Woods. 
Occasionally,  the  white  of  a  gable  shines  in  the  green, 
or  a  stone  landing-place  breaks  the  perfect  wilder- 
ness of  leaf  and  tree;  but  even  these  signs  of  human 
habits  do  not  mar;  the  graveled  walk  soon  disap- 
pears in  wooded  windings,  and  the  hills  make  insig- 
nificant the  stone  and  mortar  that  try  to  break  their 


LONDON  257 

beauty.  So  complete  a  wall  of  impenetrable  green, 
sheer  from  the  current  to  the  clouds,  it  will  be  hard 
to  equal  elsewhere.  Like  all  the  English  landscape, 
it  has  an  ordered,  finished  look;  it  is  as  if  the  Great 
Gardener  had  said  to  himself:  "Here,  from  this 
little  river  to  these  hilltops,  I  will  spread  a  velvet 
carpet  all  of  green." 

Loafing  along,  enjoying  everything,  coming  sud- 
denly upon  philandering  couples  half-hidden  under 
overhanging  boughs,  passing  crumbling  cottages  and 
barges  that  seem  to  have  been  asleep  for  centuries, 
one  issues,  eventually,  upon  signs  of  a  second  lock. 
It  is  the  Cookham  Lock.  All  the  experiences  of 
one's  first  lock  are  repeated.  Again  one  pays  the 
lockkeeper  by  slipping  three  pennies  into  the  little 
bag  he  presents  at  the  end  of  a  pole  longer  than  most 
fishing  poles;  in  return  for  which  you  take  and  pre- 
serve the  red  ticket  that  rests  in  the  bag,  since  you  are 
paying  also  for  your  return  trip.  Again  one 
scrambles  and  waits,  waits  and  scrambles. 

I  found  the  danger  of  the  lock  exaggerated,  the 
fun  underestimated.  A  little  skill  in  river-craft,  and 
some  unselfishness  will  take  any  newcomer  through 
the  lock-ordeal.  The  only  danger  is  from  pressing 
too  feverishly  forward,  getting  jammed  between  a 
heavy  launch  and  the  wall,  and — crack! — having 
one's  light  skiff  snapped  in  two,  one's  self  left  sitting 
in  water.  But  even  this  means  little  danger;  the 
boats  are  but  inches  apart,  one  could  not  possibly 
drown.  Yet  there  is  a  certain  comfort  in  observing, 
next  to  the  notice-board  of  the  Thames  Conservancy, 
a  placard  recording  the  presence  of  life-saving  ap- 
pliances at  each  lock.  Yes,  they  do  these  things  well 


258  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

in  England.  All  is  orderly,  comfortable,  and,  for 
all  persons  of  good  humor,  as  pleasant  as  possible. 

The  thing  to  do  (we  had  it  upon  the  assurance  of 
my  friend  the  dapper  little  dilettante  in  cosmopolitan 
entertainment,  who  mingled  the  cults  of  Watteau 
and  Whitechapel  with  Viennese  coffee  in  the  unpro- 
pitious  climate  of  London)  was  to  lunch  at  the  little 
inn  at  Cookham.  So,  once  safely  through  the  sec- 
ond lock,  that  of  Cookham,  a  few  strokes  of  the 
sculls  brought  us  to  what  was  evidently  the  inn  in 
question.  It  fronted  the  river  so  closely  that  one's 
skiff  actually  nosed  upon  the  lawn  where  people  were 
taking  coffee  and  cognac.  Into  the  close-packed 
ranks  of  the  skiffs  and  punts  assembled  in  this  inn's 
private  waterway  we  ran  our  crafts  and  began  at 
once  upon  a  new  campaign,  the  search  for  a  table, 
and  the  things  that  hungry  folks  consider  a  table's 
concomitants. 

The  reputation  of  Satan  is  scarcely  wrorse  than 
that  of  the  river  inns  in  England.  Robbery  is 
averred  to  be  but  a  mild  term  compared  to  the 
method  of  these  inns.  It  is  these  notorious  habits 
that  compel  the  river-going  young  men  and  maidens 
to  proceed  upon  the  day's  excursion  loaded  down 
with  hampers.  The  hampers  may  be  unsightly,  they 
may  destroy  the  comfort  of  the  cab  and  the  boat, 
but  they  enable  the  great  British  public  to  evade  a 
palpable  assault  upon  its  patience  and  its  pockets. 
Yet,  for  our  own  part,  we  found  this  particular  river 
inn,  not,  measured  by  American  standards,  espe- 
cially expert  in  robbery.  It  is  true  we  spent  weary, 
anxious  moments,  waiting  for  and  at  last  seizing  upon 
a  table.  It  is  true  that  we  sat  for  long  apparently 


LONDON  259 

as  unnoticed  as  a  grain  of  sand  in  Sahara.  But  these 
things  are  incidental  to  outdoor  dining  the  world 
over.  And  the  meal  we  finally  got,  about  three  in 
the  afternoon,  having  left  home  about  nine,  after  a 
slender  breakfast,  was  one  of  the  best  we  had  come 
upon  in  England.  I  recall  especially  some  salmon  and 
cucumbers,  good  as  only  England  can  produce;  also 
a  hock  soup.  The  waiter  was  from  Vienna,  and  he 
served  us  the  coffee  afterwards  upon  the  lawn,  with 
the  most  exquisite  apologies  for  its  un-Viennese  quali- 
ties. Somewhere,  upon  the  lawn,  a  band  was  playing. 
Gradually  people  began  to  call  for  their  skiffs  and 
start  for  home.  Loath  as  we  were,  we,  too,  were 
presently  of  the  home-bound  company. 

The  homeward  way  differed  from  the  outgoing 
only  in  its  greater  pace.  Where  we  had  loafed  we 
now  sped;  the  evening  was  cooler,  and  a  pleasant 
rivalry  to  reach  the  locks  for  the  first  entry  was  on. 
But  that  fortune  never  befell  us.  At  Boulter's  some 
characteristic  conversation  came  to  us.  It  was  the 
lockkeeper  talking  to  a  familiar  in  one  of  the  waiting 
skiffs. 

"There'll  be  reports  this  day,"  he  said,  "three  got 
upset  in  this  lock  this  morning."  "Hurt?"  said  the 
other.  "No;  but  jolly  well  wet."  And  with  that, 
quite  as  an  affair  of  course,  the  incident  passed.  We 
spent  close  to  an  hour  in  Boulter's,  but  we  regretted 
nothing.  We  found  a  train  at  Maidenhead  exactly 
upon  the  point  of  departure,  and  we  came,  eventually, 
upon  London  in  the  consciousness  of  having  pleas- 
antly escaped  a  London  Sunday. 


260  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

V 

THAT    LITTLE    PLACE    IN   THE    COUNTRY 

To  the  English  innkeeper  I  referred,  just  now,  in 
terms  which,  while  not  my  own  so  much  as  those  of 
common  report,  were  none  too  complimentary.  The 
more  deeply  one  studies  the  public,  purchasable,  hos- 
pitalities of  England,  the  more  one  becomes  con- 
vinced that,  whether  or  no  we  absolve  the  nation  of 
intentionally  robbing  the  stranger  while  taking  him  in, 
the  art  of  wayside  innkeeping  is  not  now,  whatever 
may  be  the  records  of  the  past,  an  English  one.  This 
is  the  more  remarkable  since  England  is  otherwise  so 
eminent  in  outdoor  life  and  sport.  We  have  made 
many  comparisons  in  the  foregoing  pages;  already 
the  question  of  cuisine  in  the  leading  European  cen- 
ters has  come  up,  leaving  England  a  straggler  in  the 
race ;  let  us  now  see  how  even  in  its  loveliest  country- 
sides, in  its  balmiest  airs,  England  fails  in  realizing 
its  chances  for  being  a  wise  and  far-seeing  hostess. 

WHY  do  the  English,  why  do  the  Americans, 
flock  so  regularly  to  the  European  continent  for  their 
holiday  months?  For  this  reason,  briefly:  the  Euro- 
pean continental  has  best  solved  the  art  of  keeping 
hotels.  Think  over  the  names  of  the  great  hoteliers 
of  the  world;  where  they  are  not  Swiss,  they  are  Ger- 
man, or  Austrian,  or  even  Italian  or  French.  One 
need  not  enter  into  the  question  of  the  great  hotels 
of  the  great  towns,  but  simply  with  the  failure  of  our 
English  cousins  to  keep  a  modest  yet  attractive  inn 
in  the  country. 


LONDON  261 

The  English  travel  almost  as  avidly  as  do  the 
Americans.  They  flood  the  continent  even  more 
continuously  than  we  do;  at  certain  seasons,  when 
but  few  of  us  are  abroad  in  the  world,  the  English 
dominate  the  European  scene.  Able  as  they  are  to 
make  their  journeys  to  the  pleasure  spots  of  Europe 
so  easily  and  quickly,  they  see  many  moods  of  the 
continent  that  are  not  often  revealed  to  us  whose 
holiday  period  is  more  confined.  But  why  do  the 
English  seek  abroad,  on  the  continent,  their  rest  and 
recreation? 

Simply  for  this  reason:  the  English  themselves 
don't  know  how  to  supply  either  rest  or  recreation. 
The  English  innkeeper  does  not  know  what  to  do 
with  sunshine,  nor  with  food,  nor  with  the  human 
craving  for  light  and  laughter  and  music. 

The  English  growl  in  their  clubs  and  at  their  fire- 
sides at  the  invasion  of  the  European  waiter.  Every 
now  and  again  the  old  discussion  rises  again:  Are 
there  no  English  waiters  left  to-day?  Mighty  few, 
indeed;  and  mostly  very  bad.  It  is  all  very  well  to 
talk  of  dumping  labor  on  the  British  market,  just 
as  foreign  goods  are  supposed  to  be  dumped  into 
the  London  shops ;  the  public  would  not  buy  shoddy, 
nor  accept  inadequate  service  if  the  other  thing  were 
to  be  had.  If  England  made  better  silks  and  cottons 
than  the  Germans,  they  need  fear  no  dumping;  if  the 
English  were  good  waiters,  the  foreign  waiters  would 
soon  enough  be  out  of  jobs.  The  cry  that  the  for- 
eigner will  keep  body  and  soul  together  on  what  the 
Englishman  will  starve  on  is  simply  one  of  those 
smooth  shibboleths  with  which  the  incompetent  of 
this  world  try  to  cloak  the  fact  that  they  are  going 


262  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

under.  At  home,  it  is  never  (save  in  one  or  two 
places  of  public  resort,  or  in  one's  club,  in  London) 
an  Englishman  who  waits  on  an  Englishman. 
Abroad,  when  the  Englishman  goes  to  Venice,  he 
finds  the  hotels  on  the  Grand  Canal  kept  by  Ger- 
mans; in  Sorrento,  the  managers,  if  not  the  owners, 
are  Austrians;  even  in  Naples  the  Swiss  hotelier  is 
to  the  fore ;  from  the  Lido  to  Ostend  he  will  hardly 
find  one  of  his  own  countrymen  at  the  profitable 
game  of  innkeeping.  There  is  Bailey's,  in  Boulogne; 
but  there  must  always  be  exceptions ;  and,  by  reverse 
revenge,  most  of  the  great  hotels  the  other  end  of 
the  same  channel  route,  in  Folkestone,  are  kept  by 
Continentals. 

England  plainly  does  not  know  the  art  of  keeping 
a  hotel.  If  you  point  out  this  or  that  famously  suc- 
cessful inn  in  England,  as  the  Old  Ship  in  Brighton, 
or  the  Lord  Warden  in  Dover,  those  are  still  the 
rarest  of  exceptions.  England  has  simply  forgotten 
how.  Once  upon  a  time  she  must  have  known;  the 
fine  old  legends  of  mine  host  and  mine  inn  indubitably 
had  much  of  their  root  in  British  soil.  But  to-day 
she  has  forgotten.  Just  as  in  shopkeeping,  the  fine 
old  complacent  cry  rings  out  against  all  argument: 
"We  never  have  stocked  that  article,  sir,"  indicat- 
ing with  the  triumphant  obstinacy  of  a  mule  that 
what  never  has  been  never  will  be.  What  was  once 
good  enough  for  British  travellers  must  still  be  good 
enough.  Let  motor  cars  and  aeroplanes  come  or 
not,  as  they  choose ;  here  we  are  at  the  old  sign  keep- 
ing our  inn  just  as  we  did  when  an  earlier  George 
was  king.  If  you  don't  like  the  place,  why,  demme, 
stay  out  it.  And  so  all  the  world  and  his  wife  does 


LONDON  263 

stay  out  of  it.    And  so  all  the  world  and  his  wife  does 
innkeeper  looks  sour  and  curses  the  world  at  large. 

LET  me  give  you  a  bit  of  vivid,  illuminating  expe- 
rience. 

It  was  little  enough  we  wanted  that  day,  within 
this  twelvemonth, — just  a  little  place  in  the  country 
somewhere  in  England.  As  by  telepathy  we  had  all, 
the  New  Yorker  and  ourselves,  come  to  that  same 
decision;  just  rest,  and  peace,  and  English  fare;  the 
English  scene,  the  English  air.  In  our  preliminary 
letters  we  grew  quite  lyric  about  the  prospect.  Dear 
old  England,  etc.  For  weeks  the  New  Yorker  had 
been  in  the  clutches  of  a  fashionable  Kur-ort  in  Ger- 
many; his  term  was  about  to  expire,  and  his  temper 
was  doing  the  same;  he  declared  himself  so  full  of 
veal  that  he  dared  not  look  a  cow  in  the  face.  As 
for  ourselves,  the  embarrassment  of  Parisian  culi- 
nary riches  was  heavy  upon  us;  you  cannot  eat  sole 
with  mussel  sauce  daily  without  ennui,  and  even  the 
coupe  de  fruits  a  la  champagne  begins  to  pall  when 
you  take  it  every  other  day.  Whenever  a  friend  of 
ours  declared  intention  to  return  to  America  we  asked 
him,  as  with  one  accord,  to  do  us  the  favor  and  eat, 
for  us,  a  good  steak  somewhere.  We  were  sicken- 
ing of  sauces  and  of  a-la's.  We  sighed  for  an  honest 
cut  from  the  joint,  with  potatoes  in  their  jackets. 
We  yearned  to  watch  again  the  carver  trundling  the 
smoking  beef  alongside  and  slicing  off  huge  slices  for 
our  plates.  "Oh,  to  be  in  England  ..."  we  sang, 
and  could  hardly  await  the  time. 

Quite  aside  from  mere  food,  there  were  plenty  of 
other  reasons  why  we  sighed  to  be  in  England. 


264  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

Some  of  us  were  somewhat  too  taut  in  the  nerves  as 
a  result  of  the  pursuit  of  happiness  in  Paris;  some 
of  us  were  tired  of  packing  and  unpacking;  and  some 
of  us  had  work  to  do,  especially  the  New  Yorker  and 
I.  So,  in  the  prospect,  we  told  ourselves  we  would 
do  our  work,  we  would  regain  our  quiet  nerves,  we 
would  find  our  normal  health,  in  that  little  place  in 
the  country,  in  England. 

Have  you  ever  seen  those  lovely  pictures  which  ap- 
pear in  the  magazines  about  the  time  the  theat- 
rical Rialto  awakes  from  its  summer  siesta?  They 
depict  the  famous  matinee  idol,  in  the  act  of  shearing 
sheep,  or  stacking  hay,  on  his  little  place  in  the  coun- 
try, in  England.  Others  show  the  great  beauty,  who 
is  incidentally  an  actress,  watering  the  flowers  on  her 
houseboat  on  the  Thames.  Others  show  the  little 
farm  in  Surrey  owned  by  the  well-known  playwright 
whose  new  comedy.  .  .  .  You  know  the  sort  of 
thing.  We  had,  in  miniature,  of  course,  brought 
down  to  the  proper  scale  of  our  own  insignificance,  as 
it  were,  our  own  rustic  dreams.  The  New  Yorker, 
indeed,  came  to  the  conspiracy  armed  with  a  map  and 
a  plan  that  would  have  done  credit  to  a  search  for 
stolen  treasure.  We  were  swift  on  the  trail  with 
him. 

NEVER  was  a  more  glorious  day  in  all  England 
than  that  day.  Whatever  else  it  may  have  done, 
earlier  in  the  year — and  the  inhabitants  looked 
gloomy  when  you  mentioned  weather,  ordinarily  the 
only  staple  of  English  conversation — on  that  day  the 
climate  could  have  been  no  fairer  anywhere  beneath 
the  sun.  It  was  actually  hot,  though  it  was  still  early 


LONDON  265 

morning.  The  Channel  glittered  under  a  haze  that 
was  Italian  or  American,  anything  but  English.  A 
day,  if  ever  there  was  one  whereon  to  breakfast  un- 
der the  trees,  somewhere  in  God's  own  dining-room, 
with  only  the  world  as  walls.  A  day  .  .  .  yes,  and 
a  Sunday,  at  that. 

What  a  day  for  the  holiday-makers !  We  thought 
of  the  crowds  upon  the  roads  to  Versailles;  of  the 
German  families  sitting  in  hundreds  of  towns,  fash- 
ionable and  otherwise,  listening  to  music  and  sipping 
innocuous  fluids;  we  thought  of  a  garden  in  Florence 
and  the  dinners  eaten  there  under  the  moon  with  the 
bells  and  the  nightingales  caroling— and  then  we 
awoke  to  the  fact  that  it  was  Sunday  and  we  were  in 
England.  Still,  nothing  venture,  and  there  would 
certainly  be  no  breakfast  under  the  trees. 

We  began  at  a  large  and  luxurious  hotel,  where 
the  sun  was  simply  ramping  and  raging  to  enter  the 
dining-room.  We  noted,  as  we  entered,  an  evil 
omen;  the  supercilious  foreign  waiters  were  pulling 
down  the  curtains,  and  closing  out  the  summer. 
Breakfast  outdoors!  Unheard  of!  The  air  of: 
%tSo  was  giebt's  ja  gar  nicht!"  carefully  assumed  to 
prevent  the  average  British  traveler  from  suspect- 
ing that  the  waiter  was  German. 

Well,  if  not  there,  then  somewhere  else.  We  de- 
termined to  wander  forth.  Alas,  we  might  be  wan- 
dering yet,  if  we  had  clung  to  our  decision  not  to 
leave  that  part  of  Kent  without  breakfast  outdoors. 
Through  streets  that  reeked  of  stale  Saturday  nights, 
of  fish  markets,  of  ham  and  eggs,  we  wandered; 
nothing,  nothing.  At  last,  in  a  sort  of  clearing,  there 
loomed  a  likely  spot;  only  an  innyard,  indeed,  but  at 


266  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

least  some  space,  some  chance.  All  that  was  needed 
was  a  little  table,  a  chair;  the  rest  was  for  the  cook 
and  the  waiter;  there  was  God's  sunshine,  and  there 
was  our  appetite.  But  you  never  saw  so  bland  a  look 
of  amazement  as  was  on  the  face  of  that  publican 
when  we  entered  and  put  our  question.  Never  had 
such  a  thing  been  heard  of,  that  was  evident,  and 
rather  than  go  carefully  into  a  map-and-ax  plan  of 
campaign,  we  simply  went  away  from  there.  But 
we  could  not  refrain  from  one  pathetic  Parthian 
shot :  ''England  does  not  deserve  a  summer,  for  she 
doesn't  know  what  to  do  with  it  when  she  gets  it." 

That  episode  was  to  be  the  keynote  of  all  our 
coming  experience.  Where,  on  all  the  European 
continent,  would  you  fail  to  find  on  such  a  day  as 
that  your  cup  of  coffee  and  your  rolls  served  for  you 
out  of  doors?  Oh,  yes,  the  English  will  complain, 
year  after  year,  "We  don't  get  any  real  summers 
any  more,"  but  as  for  trying  to  learn  how  to  live  in 
summer,  when  it  really  comes  to  them.  .  .  . 

Once  again,  let  us  not,  in  this  detail,  look  home  too 
closely.  We  ourselves,  in  America,  are  but  just 
learning  that  we  have  an  Italian  summer.  Let  us 
continue  to  regard  the  beam  in  our  British  cousin's 
eye. 

A  British  breakfast  is  not,  even  at  best,  an  idyllic 
thing.  When  you  put  it  upon  its  worst  possibilities. 

.  .  .  Well,  we  may  say  briefly  that,  like  the 
beasts  of  the  field,  we  fed.  Having  fed,  we  returned 
to  the  Great  Affair.  The  Quest.  The  Search.  The 
Pursuit  of  Happiness,  and  the  Little  Place  in  the 
Country. 

The  New  Yorker  pored  for  the  hundredth  time 


LONDON  267 

over  his  map.  His  informant  was  a  star  of  great 
renown,  and  a  Frenchwoman,  at  that ;  he  raved  about 
how  she  had  raved  about  the  place.  And,  upon  a 
point  like  that,  a  little  inn  in  the  country,  you  may 
depend  upon  it  that  a  Frenchwoman  would  know. 
.  .  .  We  sallied  forth  gayly  into  the  Kentish 
sunshine.  Miles  we  went,  many  miles;  even  to-day 
the  thought  of  that  cab-bill  gives  a  thrill  like  a  knife 
cutting  purse-strings.  Miles,  and  some  of  them  were 
in  circles;  the  fact  of  the  matter  was  that  the  scenery 
refused  properly  to  correspond  to  the  map.  It  sel- 
dom does;  inanimate  nature,  too,  can  have  its  share 
of  cussedness.  At  last,  however,  we  found  the  place 
that  had  most  of  the  needed  and  stipulated  attributes. 

Roses  clambered  up  the  windows;  there  was  a 
tennis  court,  and  bowers  were  athwart  the  hedges 
wherein  one  could  take  one's  tea.  Yes,  we  would 
have  tea.  Delicious  tea.  Never  was  such  a  day! 
We  had  found  the  little  place  in  the  country.  Our 
appetites  grew  with  our  increasing  joy.  We  turned 
the  simple  tea  into  a  luncheon.  Such  cold  lamb;  such 
salad,  and  such  fruit  tart,  with  such  cream !  There, 
at  last,  was  the  thing  for  which  we  had  come.  Sim- 
ply idyllic.  Mine  hostess,  too;  such  fresh  color,  such 
smiling  eyes — well,  if  we  couldn't  be  happy  there, 
couldn't  do  good  work  there,  why — we  laughed,  and 
asked  to  see  the  rooms. 

Dreams,  when  they  crash,  crash  quickly.  It  took 
but  one  short  question  to  shatter  this  one.  There 
was  no  bathroom,  and  there  was  no  modern  sanita- 
tion. And  upon  that  rock  our  good  ship  of  hope 
foundered.  For  our  friend  the  New  Yorker,  lavish 
and  romantic  enough  in  many  ways,  economic  enough 


268  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

in  many  others,  is  hard  and  practical  upon  the  point 
of  open  plumbing.  New  York  has  spoilt  him,  as  it 
has  billions  of  others,  for  anything  less  than  the  best 
in  the  way  of  bathrooms  and  plumbing.  The  hard 
look  of  defeat  came  into  his  face  when  he  listened  to 
the  hostess'  explanation  that  it  was  no  bother  at  all 
to  bring  the  tub  into  the  room  every  morning. 

SADLY  we  spent  the  evening  of  that  Sunday  in  one 
of  the  huge  hotels  in  Folkestone.  A  hotel  like  any 
other  large  hotel  in  England;  run  by  a  foreign  cor- 
poration, manned  by  foreigners.  Luxurious  enough, 
comfortable  enough,  reasonable  enough;  save  al- 
ways that  you  had  to  pay  absurdly  for  your  bath. 
No  wonder  the  legendary  Englishman  carried  his 
tub  with  him;  without  it  he  had  been  bankrupt  long 
ago.  Consider:  in  Folkestone,  with  all  the  Atlantic 
to  bathe  in,  hotels  charge  roundly  for  a  bath !  Well, 
even  so,  the  New  Yorker  and  ourselves  began  to  con- 
sider whether  it  might  not  be  possible,  after  all,  right 
there,  to  be  comfortable,  to  do  our  work.  For  the 
outdoor  luncheon  and  the  roses  our  yearning  was 
gradually  dying;  we  were  beginning  to  be  content 
with  mere  creature  comforts,  with  large  lounging- 
rooms,  with  winter-gardens,  with  an  orchestra  play- 
ing at  teatime  and  after  dinner.  Perhaps,  what  with 
the  sea-air,  and  the  quiet  .  .  . 

Hark!  What  was  that?  Beneath  the  windows 
of  our  rooms  a  sad,  a  mournful  noise.  A  dirge? 
No;  merely  the  English  proletariat  enjoying  its  Sun- 
day evening,  singing  hymns  upon  the  public  square. 
Hymns  full  of  woe  and  false  notes;  hymns  springing 
from  a  religion  without  cheer;  hymns  from  hearts 


LONDON  269 

that  construe  pleasure  as  either  a  dreadful  or  a  dis- 
astrous thing.  The  Sabbath  songs  of  a  nation  that 
does  not  know  how  to  enjoy  itself.  The  old  French- 
man was  absolutely  right;  the  English  take  both  their 
pleasure  and  their  prayers  sadly.  If  you  want  to 
know  where  the  Puritan  spirit  sprang  from,  go  listen 
to  a  Sunday  evening  sing-song  on  an  English  street. 
Then  think  of  happy  families  all  over  the  rest  of  the 
world,  returning  from  happy  Sundays,  cheerily  and 
innocently  spent;  think,  and  pity  the  English,  who 
do  not  know  what  to  do  with  either  the  sunshine  or 
with  Sunday. 

WE  were  not  yet  defeated.  There  was  still  Sur- 
rey, and  still  the  many  little  places  on  the  river, 
within  easy  reach  of  town.  We  took  out  other  maps, 
and  other  plans.  We  were  to  invade,  now,  a  country 
which,  in  the  advertisements  in  the  London  news- 
papers, reads  a  pure  paradise. 

First  we  went  to  Richmond.  There  is  no  prettier 
spot  than  Richmond  Hill  in  many  counties.  You 
look  upon  the  Thames  winding  below;  between  you 
and  that  is  only  a  pleasant  slope  of  meadow  and 
wood;  the  roadway  has  houses  only  on  one  side  so 
that  nothing  interrupts  the  view.  Some  of  the 
houses  looked  nothing  less  than  patrician — until  we 
went  inside.  For  some  of  them  were  merely  board- 
ing-houses, after  all.  And  such  houses  as  they  were ! 
Slatternly  servants  slopping  about;  the  odor  of  stale 
cooking;  threadbare  carpets,  and  unkempt  curtains. 
It  was  hard  to  ask  even  the  most  superficial  ques- 
tions; they  wanted,  for  what  they  were  evidently 
quite  unable  to  furnish,  prices  for  which  one  could 


270  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

live  at  well-known  hotels  in  London!  There  they 
were,  in  one  of  the  gardenspots  of  the  world,  and 
all  they  could  do  was  to  ask  insane  prices  for  non- 
existing  accommodations!  Imagine  that  spot  some- 
where in  Switzerland !  Every  house  would  be  appe- 
tizing and  inviting;  you  would  read  about  it  in  papers 
and  periodicals,  and  when  you  compared  the  adver- 
tisement and  the  fact  you  would  find  no  appalling 
discrepancy.  If  the  Thames,  there  in  Richmond — 
or  anywhere,  indeed,  from  Maidenhead  or  Chertsey 
to  Windsor  or  Oxford — were  anything  but  an  Eng- 
lish stream,  what  delightful  inns  and  houses  the  trav- 
eller would  find  along  its  banks ! 

House  after  house  we  saw,  each  more  dishearten- 
ing than  the  other.  Only  luncheon  could  hearten  us 
again.  We  found  an  inn.  Upon  the  public  road, 
with  motors  whizzing  noisily  by.  We  had  just 
passed  a  less  likely  looking  inn,  where  the  "ordinary" 
of  the  day  cost  half  a  crown,  as  we  had  seen  plac- 
arded in  the  window;  but,  well,  somehow  this  other 
inn  appealed  to  us,  and  we  presumed  luncheon  would 
cost  no  more.  But  it  did;  it  cost  more  than  double. 
By  a  simple  device  was  this  accomplished.  On  the 
bill  of  fare  there  were  no  prices.  This,  all  the  more, 
made  you  suppose  the  luncheon  was  at  a  fixed  price. 
By  no  means;  it  was  merely  a  temptation;  and  our 
temptation  cost  us  the  price  of  a  good  dinner  at,  say, 
the  Cafe  Riche  in  Paris.  We  did  not  say  the  lunch- 
eon had  not  been  good;  but  our  appreciation  of  the 
food,  of  the  interesting  and  tasteful  pictures  on  the 
walls,  was  spoilt  by  the  mean  little  method  of 
hoodwinking  one  with  an  unmarked  bill  of  fare. 
One  does  not  mind  that  sort  of  thing  at  the  Cafe 


LONDON  271 

Anglais,  or  at  Paillard's,  or  at  Bellevue;  and  seldom 
indeed  does  the  true  gourmet  find,  in  those  places  in 
Paris,  that  he  has  not,  in  one  way  or  another,  had  his 
money's  worth ;  but  in  a  little  two-by-three  inn  on  the 
main  highway  of  Richmond — that  was  a  bit  too 
thick!  We  never  even  paused  to  see  if  there  were 
rooms  in  that  inn;  we  had  discovered  England's  abil- 
ity, if  not  to  keep  up  to  the  times  in  sanitation  and 
outdoor  entertainment,  at  least  to  keep  up  to  them 
in  highwaymanry.  But  when  the  Continental  robs 
you,  he  does  it  with  a  smile;  the  Englishman,  even 
as  he  robs,  grumbles. 

We  glared  gloomily  toward  the  old  Star  and  Gar- 
ter, closed,  tenantless,  another  memorial  to  England's 
inability  to  play  innkeeper.  Somewhat  lower  down, 
nearer  the  river,  was  another  quite  spacious-seeming 
hotel.  It  seemed  the  last  chance;  we  attacked  it. 

It  would  be  as  hopeless  to  make  you  comprehend 
the  possibilities  of  that  house  as  to  make  you  believe 
its  shabbiness.  Here,  upon  the  slope  of  one  of  the 
fairest  of  hills,  looking  on  one  of  the  most  pic- 
turesque bends  of  the  Thames,  was  a  castellated 
house  of  several  stories.  There  were  gardens  on 
all  sides  but  one ;  that  one  looked  directly  into  sombre 
woods.  Anywhere  else  but  in  England  that  sombre- 
ness  had  been  turned  into  something  cheerful;  ter- 
raced walks  and  bowers  had  been  cut  and  the  out- 
look from  those  bedrooms  had  been  made  as  gay 
as  from  all  the  rest.  But  these  English  were  satis- 
fied to  let  those  windows  open  on  a  dismal  and  dank 
backyard,  set  in  miasmic  clutter  of  trees  whither  no 
sunshine  ever  came.  They  were  satisfied  to  do  with- 
out carpets  on  the  stairs  and  to  let  ceilings  and  walls 


272  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

hang  peeling  in  plain  view,  to  have  rooms  so  small 
that  luggage  blocked  the  corridors,  and  furniture  so 
bare  that  all  the  rooms  looked  like  prison  cells. 
From  some  windows  there  were  views  such  as  in 
Switzerland,  or  Germany,  or  France,  had  made 
the  place  internationally  famous.  These  people  let 
the  odor  of  corruption  and  carelessness  stare  you  in 
the  face,  and  asked  you  five  guineas  a  week  for  the 
privilege!  Oh,  laughter  of  the  gods!  When  you 
can  live  in  any  one  of  the  newer  private  hotels  of 
London  for  three  guineas  and  in  many  places  on  the 
Continent  for  less  than  that!  But  if  you  suggested 
that  to  these  good  English  people  they  reminded 
you  that  perhaps,  at  another  season  of  the  year,  they 
might,  etc.,  etc.,  but  that  now,  in  the  season  .  .  . 
and  then  regard  you  complacently.  Complacency, 
of  course,  is  what  all  England  is  dying  of. 

As  for  that  "season,"  well,  one  comes  to  the  con- 
clusion that  the  innkeeper's  "season,"  all  over  the 
world,  is  when  you  are  there,  just  as  the  publisher's 
season  is  when  you  are  not  there. 

We  tried  elsewhere  in  Surrey,  in  the  lovely  country 
near  Guilford  and  Esher,  but  it  came  to  the  same 
thing  everywhere.  We  read,  again  and  again,  those 
alluring  advertisements.  Mostly,  we  concluded,  they 
were  for  people  who  wanted  houses  with  innumerable 
bedrooms  and  "stabling  for  seven  horses."  The 
small  fry,  who  wanted  two  or  three  rooms,  with  a 
sitting-room  and  bathroom,  were  not  catered  to  at 
all.  You  could  find  plenty  of  places  where  you  could 
play  golf,  or  tennis,  or  get  good  fishing  or  shooting; 
but  just  quiet  lodgings,  plain,  clean  food,  modern 
sanitation  and  bathrooms,  these  things  England  has 


LONDON  273 

not  got  at  anything  like  reasonable  rates.  Nor  has 
she  got  innkeepers  that  know  enough  to  install  such 
comforts,  or  to  take  advantage  of  the  wonderful 
natural  beauties  of  the  country. 

IT  would  be  unfair  to  pretend  that  the  continent 
of  Europe  is  entirely  free  from  qualities,  just  re- 
marked, in  possession  of  which  England  has  been 
complacent  for  years.  Annually,  as  the  returning 
tide  of  travellers  is  spilled  upon  our  shores  after  its 
invasion  of  the  European  continent  and  the  British 
Isles,  we  hear  an  increasing  and  portentous  growl. 
While  a  superficial  majority  is  ever  ready  to  aver 
that  it  "has  had  a  good  time,"  a  more  captious  minor- 
ity reflects  aloud  that  UA11  they  want  over  there  is 
what  they  can  get  out  of  us."  From  this  great  presi- 
dent of  railroads  or  insurance  company,  and  from 
that  great  keeper  of  American  hotels,  we  hear  more 
and  more  noisily  the  cry  about  the  extortions  prac- 
ticed in  the  great  European  inns,  and,  indeed,  in  the 
entire  scheme  of  European  travel  and  resort.  Let 
us  not  pause  here  for  the  somewhat  ironic  contem- 
plation of  the  problem  whether  the  European  hotelier 
and  theAmerican  life-insurancepresident  arebrothers 
under  their  skins  or  not;  let  us  cling  grimly,  turning 
our  backs  upon  Altruria  and  all  sardonic  reflections, 
to  the  fact  that  America,  though  it  increasingly  visits 
Europe,  has  begun  to  rebel  against  the  abominations 
of  the  tips,  of  the  sometimes  too  outrageous  prices; 
and  against  the  innkeeping  incapacities  of  England 
itself.  Let  us  avoid  carefully  any  of  the  beams  ob- 
scuring our  own  vision:  the  hat-and-coat  highway- 
manry  in  our  American  hotels  and  restaurants,  the 


274  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

insatiable  harpies  of  our  public  wash-rooms,  the 
sleeping-car  monopoly  which  puts  its  employees  upon 
the  pocket  of  the  public  quite  as  frankly  as  any  hotel 
in  Europe. 

No,  let  us  avoid  bringing  our  comparisons  too 
close  home.  It  is  only  by  such  avoidance  that  many 
of  us  can  safely  cling  to  many  of  our  dissatisfactions 
about  Europe,  and  can  become  almost  blatant  about 
being  "back  in  God's  country  again." 

"BACK  in  God's  country  again"  is  a  phrase  now 
thoroughly  incorporated  into  the  American  language. 
To  point  out,  before  turning  our  back  on  England, 
some  of  the  little  difficulties  encountered  in  England 
by  those  familiar  only  with  the  American  language, 
may  amuse  and  sweeten  our  farewell  humor. 

VI 

THE    ENGLISH    LANGUAGE 

MY  friend  the  American  in  London  made  a  full 
circuit  of  the  park  before  he  got  his  courage  up  to 
the  point  where  he  brought  his  horse  close  up  to  that 
of  Dundreary  Junior's  and  began: 

"Say,  I've  been  thinking  it  over,  and  you've  got 
to  help  me  out:  I'm  living  in  the  funniest  little  one- 
eyed  boarding-house  near  the  Marble  Arch  you  ever 
saw.  They  call  it  a  private  hotel,  but  it's  pretty  much 
all  the  same  as  a  hash  house  on  Clinton  Street, 
Brooklyn.  Don't  suppose  you  know  Brooklyn,  do 
you?  No?  Well,  you  don't  look  it,  I'll  say  that  for 
you.  Well,  it's  like  this:  that  same  home  of  the 


LONDON  275 

j 

friendless  is  full  of  the  strangest  dubs  from  strange 
parts  you  ever  saw.  Reminds  me  of  the  barker  out- 
side the  Philippine  village  at  the  World's  Fair,  who, 
when  he  got  tired  of  the  crowd  outside  giving  him 
the  ha-ha  always  used  to  scatter  'em  with  'Walk  up, 
walk  up,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  and  see  what  strange 
people  there  are  in  the  world — besides  yourselves!' 
All  right;  there  they  are,  as  I  said,  dubs  from  the 
outlands  of  Dubville,  and  yet,  and  yet,  every  last 
one  of  them  spots  me  for  an  American!  I  don't 
care  if  they've  come  from  Hongkong  or  Rhodesia, 
they've  not  laid  eyes  or  ears  on  me  for  five  minutes 
in  the  smoking-room  before  they  ask  me  if  our  new 
President  is  friendly  to  England.  Now,  as  man  to 
man,  out  here  in  the  open,  under  the  same  sun — I 
guess  there's  a  sun  up  there,  somewhere  over  the 
soft  coal  lining! — what  is  it  about  me  that's  a  U.  S. 
A.  trademark?" 

Dundreary  Junior  has  a  drooping  mustache,  blue 
eyes  that  can  look  extremely  weary,  and  a  smile  that 
makes  rare  appearance  only  in  the  presence  of  ladies. 
He  is  one  of  the  best  turned  out  men  on  the  Row,  and 
his  lemon-colored  waistcoat,  his  bowler  that  is  ap- 
parently in  momentary  danger  of  falling  from  the 
back  of  his  head,  and  his  immaculate  buckskin  gloves 
combine  to  make  him  one  of  the  most  frequently 
nodded-to  men  in  London.  His  seat  on  a  horse  is  a 
delight  to  the  knowing  eye,  but  in  his  speech  he  is  typi- 
cal of  his  town  and  his  type.  He  looked  at  our 
American  friend  for  several  consecutive  moments, 
achieved  a  slow  smile  and  a  nod  in  the  direction  of 
a  lady  riding  in  the  opposite  direction,  and  then  ven- 
tured this  definite  explanation : 


276  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

uOh,  of  course,  don't  you  see,  they  would  know 
you,  you  see,  like  a  shot.  I  mean  to  say,  you  see, 
that  it's  quite  odds-on,  don't  you  see,  that  you — that 
you  are,  you  see  !  You  are,  I  mean  to  say;  you  are — 
aren't  you?  Eh?  You  are,  you  see;  you  are.  I 
mean  to  say,  don't  you  see,  that  it's  quite  the  best 
Starting  Price  job  of  the  meeting  that  you — well,  er, 
that  you  would  be,  don't  you  see!" 

The  American  chewed  on  that  a  little,  and  then  re- 
marked, apropos  of  nothing  that  Dundreary  Junior 
could  imagine  as  relevant. 

"Say,  ain't  it  a  fine  thing  we  speak  the  same  lan- 
guage?" 

A  mob  of  both  sexes  cantered  past,  and  Dundreary 
remarked,  in  his  usual  casual  tone: 

"That's  a  nice  cob  of  Lord  Cadowgan's." 

"Just  as  you  say,"  said  the  American,  "but  whose 
did  you  say  it  was?" 

"Lord  Cadowgan's." 

"How  d'  you  spell  it?" 

"C-a-d-o-g-a-n." 

The  American  looked  conscience-stricken,  or  as  if 
he  had  a  touch  of  liver,  or  something  equally  painful. 

"Good  Lord,"  he  said,  "I've  been  making  that 
rhyme  with — oh,  well,  with  Harrigan,  so  far  as  the 
vowels  go,  any  way,  Cadowgan — you  say?  Ah, 
yes;  it's  just  as  I  said;  it's  a  God's  blessing  we  speak 
the  same  language.  Yes,  Sir.  That's  what  keeps 
the  two  countries  so  close  together.  The  language. 
Still,  as  I  was  saying,  in  that  hash  house  of  mine  up 
near  the  Marble  Arch — well,  I  can't  make  up  my 
mind  whether  it's  my  feet  or  my  accent ;  but  whatever 
it  is,  they  have  me  marked  and  branded.  Sure !  I 


LONDON  277 

do  my  best;  I  try  to  talk  just  the  same  as  you,  just 
the  same.  Yes,  indeed.  And  I  say,  'Don't  you 
know'  at  least  every  few  yards.  That  reminds  me," 
and  a  distinctly  new  look  of  puzzlement  added  itself 
to  the  other  sorts  of  amazement  that  had  been  flitting 
over  his  face,  "I  don't  know  as  I've  ever  heard  you 
say  'Don't  you  know'  since  I've  had  the  pleasure  of 
your  acquaintance.  How's  that?" 

Dundreary  Junior  looked  wearier  than  ever. 

"Well,  don't  you  see,"  he  was  beginning,  when  the 
American  interrupted  him  with : 

"That's  it!  There  we  are,  plain  as  the  Statue  of 
Liberty  I  You  don't  realize  it — I  reckon  it  ain't  the 
fashion  to  pry  into  these  little  details  of  language  in 
London — but  you've  swapped  'Don't  you  know'  for 
'Don't  you  see.'  Yes,  now  that  I  come  to  think  of 
it,  the  most  frequent  parts  of  speech  in  London  con- 
versation— if  you  call  it  conversation — (this  was  a 
remark  made  only  for  his  own  ear)  are  'You  see1 
and  'I  mean  to  say.*  Yes,  I'll  make  a  note  of  that. 
Maybe  if  I  use  those  bits  of  lingo  often  enough  and 
change  my  boarding-house,  I  won't  get  suspected  of  be- 
ing made  in  America  inside  of  the  first  twenty  seconds 
after  they  meet  me.  I'm  sure  it's  not  my  accent,  for 
I've  been  here  several  months,  and  I  ought  to  have 
lost  it,  don't  you  think  so  ?  As  for  my  boots,  I  bought 
'em  right  here  in  London,  at  an  American  shoe  store ; 
and  if  there's  anything  more  sure  than  another  in  all 
this  wide  and  woolly  world  it  is  that  all  the  shoes 
sold  in  London's  American  shoe  stores  were  made  in 
Birmingham  or  wherever  it  is  you  people  manufac- 
ture shoes;  if  those  shoes  ever  saw  Brockton,  Mass., 
I'll  eat — oh,  I'd  even  eat  some  of  that  everlasting 


278  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

haddock  the  head  waiter  tries  to  palm  off  on  me  for 
breakfast !  I  tell  you  right  now  though,  the  thing's 
getting  on  my  nerves,  and  if  you  don't  help  me  out, 
I  don't  know  who  will.  As  I  say,  I've  been  here  long 
enough,  and  summer's  good  and  gone;  there  ain't 
supposed  to  be  an  American  left  in  town;  I'm  just  a 
left-over;  and  I'm  doing  my  best  to  be  a  real  Lon- 
doner. Haven't  I  staid  in  London  until  November 
just  on  purpose  to  see  a  November  fog?  No,  Sir;  it 
beats  me." 

Dundreary  Junior  went  on  stroking  his  mustache ; 
he  had  spied  a  lady  he  knew  in  the  distance.  By  way 
of  elucidating  the  American's  mystery  he  said: 

"Suppose  we  do  the  bit  by  the  Barracks?" 

"Whatever  you  say  yourself,"  said  the  American. 
And  Dundreary  turned  out  of  the  Row  on  to  the 
path  that  fronts  the  Knightsbridge  home  of  the 
Guards. 

"Sending  the  mare  down  for  huntin'  next  week," 
said  Dundreary  Junior. 

"Say  it  again,"  said  the  American. 

Dundreary  looked  more  bored  than  ever.  "I 
mean  to  say,  don't  you  see,  that  the  mare's  goin' 
down  for  huntin'  next  week." 

"Ah,"  said  the  American,  "there  it  is  again,  I  tell 
you;  Mary's  learning  something  every  day.  I  see 
how  it  is;  you  folks  over  here  have  made  up  your 
minds  that  the  'h'  has  been  getting  kinder  lonesome 
getting  lost  all  alone,  so  you've  sent  the  'g'  along  to 
get  lost  with  it.  Hot  scheme  !  The  two  alphabetical 
Babes  in  the  Wood,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  little  H 
and  little  G.  Goin'  and  huntin',  eh?  Another  little 
item  for  my  little  list.  That's  Gilbert,  I  know;  but 


LONDON  279 

then  we  Americans  appreciated  Gilbert  long  before 
you  people  did.  Huntin',  eh?  So  the  mare  likes 
huntin' !  What  is  it?  Pheasants  or  grouse  or  part- 
ridges, and  where  does  the  mare  come  in?" 

If  boredom  could  be  framed  entirely  into  one  face, 
that  face  was  Dundreary  Junior's. 

"Huntin'  with  Lord  Beaver's  hounds,  don't  you 
see,"  he  said. 

"Oh,  hounds!  Excuse  me!  How  d'  spell  his 
lordship's  name?" 

"B-e-1-v-o-i-r." 

"Great  Greeley — and  I've  been  making  that 
rhyme  with  Choctaw!  Belvuaw,  that's  what  I've 
been  calling  it.  What  with  the  Franco-British  show, 
don't  you  know,  and  the  Entente  Cordiale,  and  all 
that,  and  so  as  not  to  let  my  University  Place  French 
get  too  rusty,  I  thought  I'd  get  all  the  French  accent 
on  some  of  these  Norman  names  of  yours  around 
here.  And  you  tell  me  it's  Beaver;  alle  same  badger 
or  any  other  common  bird  or  beast?  Well,  well — 
say,  ain't  it  a  God's  blessing  we  speak  the  same  lan- 
guage? Honest,  it'd  tickle  me  to  death  to  have  a 
real  heart  to  heart  talk  with  you  about  some  of  these 
little  details  of  the  language  that  binds  us  together, 
tongues  across  the  sea,  as  it  were.  Tell  you  what, 
come  and  have  lunch  with  me  at  the  Cecil." 

"Quite  sorry!  I  just  went  and  had  a  bone  an 
hour  ago." 

"Ham  or  whale?" 

"Beg  pardon?" 

"Hambone  or  whalebone?" 

"Oh,  I  mean  to  say,  of  course,  don't  you  see,  I  had 
a  grilled  bone  at  the  club — " 


280  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

The  American  smothered  something  that  might 
have  been  "Sell,"  but  wasn't. 

But  he  was  not  suppressed  for  long.  At  the 
Marble  Arch  he  began  again. 

"Say,  this  unemployed  gag  gives  me  the  Willies! 
If  you  ask  me,  I  don't  believe  you  could  lead  any  of 
that  bunch  to  work,  not  if  you  blindfolded  'em ! 
Offer  'em  a  job  and  the  first  thing  they  want  to  know 
is  how  much  time  they  get  off  a  week  and  how  much 
beer  money;  never  what  they  will  do  to  keep  the  job 
down.  No,  Sir.  I  know  'em !  And  they  have  the 
nerve  to  ask  Congress  or  Parliament,  or  whatever 
you  call  it,  to  feed  'em,  just  for  their  consenting  to  be 
alive!  The  world's  full  of  places  where  you  can't 
get  work  done  for  you,  and  here  this  bunch  stands 
around  a  banner  and  listens  to  blood-and-thunder 
talk.  You  ask  any  fellow-countryman  of  mine  who's 
ever  tackled  the  hired  man  or  hired  girl  problem 
what  he  thinks  of  the  unemployed!  No,  Sir;  there's 
no  sympathy  from  me  for  that  lot." 

Past  the  Serpentine  the  American's  horse  disliked 
the  looks  of  the  boathouse,  and  for  a  few  moments 
he  had  his  hands  full.  But  it  was  not  long  before  he 
was  off  again  on  his  conversational  excursion. 

"Say,  I  wish  I  could  sleep  for  about  forty-eight 
hours  from  this  present  writing.  Want  to  know 
why?  Easiest  thing  ever!  To-morrow's  Sunday, 
that's  why.  Sunday  in  London!  Say,  if  I  was  one 
of  these  fellows  that  write  plays — the  kind  they  like 
in  Germany,  where  a  tragedy  doesn't  satisfy  them, 
but  they  have  to  invent  an  extra  dismal  brand  of 
drama  and  call  it  Trauerspiel — funeral  play! — the 
very  first  thing  I'd  do  would  be  to  write  a  funeral 


LONDON  281 

play  and  call  it  'Sunday  in  London/  Yes,  Sir,  just 
like  that,  'Sunday  in  London.'  And,  mind  you, 
there's  folks  that  doubt  it,  even  for  a  minute;  some 
of  them  here  in  London  have  been  sitting  around 
lately  and  protesting  to  the  newspapers  on  the  ques- 
tion, Is  London  dull?  Is  London  dull !  Is  a  Sunday 
in  London  like  a  slice  of  the  simple  life,  or  isn't  it? 
Ask  me;  just  ask  me.  Say,  I've  walked  from  Port- 
man  Square  to  Northumberland  Avenue,  all  of  a  Sun- 
day morning,  in  God's  sunshiny  hours,  between  9 
and  u,  and  never  met  a  human  soul!  Fact,  abso- 
lute fact!  It  was  like  this:  A  friend  of  a  friend  of 
mine  blew  in  from  Chicago  the  other  Saturday — oh, 
sorry,  sorry!  I  thought  I  was  in  God's  country; 
what  I  really  mean  is  that  he  ran  up  to  town  from 
the  North.  Lives  in  Newcastle,  where  the  coal  comes 
from. 

"We'd  been  racing  together;  he,  being  in  the 
know,  dropped  a  wad,  and  little  Me,  from  York 
State,  where  the  ponies  are  as  extinct  as  the  dodo, 
betting  a  shoestring,  wound  up  with  my  expenses 
paid  for  a  week.  However,  after  a  dinner  at  the 
Royal,  and  a  look  in  at  a  show — and  say,  the  best 
dance  in  your  town  is  by  a  gang  of  Spaniards  your 
people  haven't  had  the  sense  to  boom,  and  their  turn 
is  called  La  Flamenca  and  Her  Lovers,  or  some  such 
name,  and  there's  a  girl  in  there  could  have  my  little 
shoes  and  her  big  boots  all  under  the — .  However, 
as  I  was  saying,  we  came  out  of  the  show  so  early  the 
gentleman  from  Coaltown  thought  it  would  be  a 
shame  to  say  farewell,  and  dragged  me  to  the  Savoy 
to  see  the  celebrities  come  and  go.  We  sat  there, 
while  those  amazing  males  and  females  meandered 


282  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

by,  and  when  the  lights  of  London  began  to  get  dim 
we  padded  it  out  over  the  rubber  courtyard,  and  my 
friend  from  the  Grimy  wound  up  by  asking  me  to 
breakfast  at  his  club.  One  of  those  solemn  political 
clubs  on  Northumberland  Avenue. 

"So  Me  strolling  in  the  lonely  sunshine  of  the 
Sunday  morning!  Lonesome?  Say,  I  felt  like  tak- 
ing off  my  hat  to  Nelson  in  Trafalgar  Square !  He 
was  about  the  only  thing  in  the  image  of  man  that  I 
saw  between  Park  Lane  and  Cockspur  Street.  And 
I've  found  out  the  difference  between  a  London  club 
and  the  other  kind,  too;  the  London  club  is  a  place 
where  you  go  to  avoid  the  human  race!  If  you  see 
a  man  you  know  in  a  London  club  you  frown  at  him 
and  go  on  reading  the  paper;  and  to  show  you  really 
are  at  home  you  keep  your  hat  on.  Don't  you  run 
away — what  I  mean  is,  Americans  mustn't  run  away 
with  the  idea  that  a  club  is  a  sociable  institution;  no, 
Sir;  we  have  that  all  wrong  on  our  side  of  the  water; 
here,  where  I  understand  the  clubs  really  come  from, 
the  club  is  a  place  where  you  go  to  be  let  alone.  Yes, 
that's  right;  the  only  club  where  people  don't  seem 
afraid  to  speak  to  each  other,  here  in  London,  is  the 
Garrick  Club.  Fact!  Well,  that's  how  I  came  to 
sample  a  Sunday  morning  in  London.  You'll  admit 
there's  not  much  to  do  in  London  on  Sunday." 

"Oh,  don't  you  see,"  drawled  Dundreary,  "you 
can  always  hear  the  Guards'  Band  play  at  noon  in 
the  park,  and  then,  you  see,  there  are  always  con- 
certs in  the  afternoon.  Besides,  there's  always,  I 
mean  to  say,  church,  you  see — church,  don't  you 


see." 


"Yes,"  said  the  American,  "there  we  are,  don't 


LONDON  283 

you  know — sorry,  don't  you  see,  I  mean.  There  we 
are !  Oh,  I  know  the  whole  lot  of  Sunday  attractions 
in  London;  haven't  I  worked  as  hard  as  any  nigger 
trying  to  find  them,  in  the  first  place,  and  then  trying 
to  enjoy  myself  deliriously  over  them? 

"No,  Sir;  no  more  Sundays  in  London  for  me,  if 
I  can  help  it.  I've  tried  everything  to  avoid  them. 
One  Sunday  I  ran  down  to  Brighton.  Is  that  right? 
'Ran  down  to  Brighton  ?'  If  it's  'ran  up,'  just  correct 
me;  don't  spare  my  feelings.  Anyway,  I  took  the 
Southern  Belle  all  Pullman  express,  and  if  you  ask 
me,  most  of  the  southbound  belles  on  that  train  hail 
from  the  Empire. 

"However,  far  be  it  from  me  to  quarrel  with  any 
spice  of  life,  even  if  you  have  to  get  onto  a  Brighton 
train  for  it.  I  don't  say,  mind  you,  that  Brighton's 
any  raving,  tearing,  giddy  whirl  on  a  Sunday,  but  you 
can  always  stroll  on  the  Parade  and  lunch  at  the  Old 
Ship,  and  eat  oysters  in  Little  East  Street,  and  take 
coffee  somewhere  else,  and  see  the  human  show  at 
the  various  hotel  lounges,  and  feel  that  you've  got 
away  with  the  middle  of  the  day  without  absolutely 
perishing  of  the  disease  you're  slowly  but  surely 
dying  of. 

"Yes,  I've  seen  it  on  you  for  a  long  time;  and  any 
time  you  feel  it's  going  to  take  you  too  suddenly, 
just  tip  me  a  word,  and  I'll  pass  far  away  from  here; 
honest,  I  will.  Bored,  my  dear  boy,  bored — that's 
what  you  are.  I've  seen  you  drooping  under  it  for  a 
long  time.  It's  an  awful  complaint,  and  it  affects 
different  people  differently;  it  only  makes  you  look 
sad ;  it  makes  me  wild,  simply  wild !  Once,  to  get  rid 
of  the  complaint,  I  went  even  farther  than  Brighton; 


284  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

I  went  to  Paris  over  Sunday.  Say,  I'm  at  home  there, 
you  know;  they  don't  laugh  nearly  so  much  at  my 
French  over  there  as  they  do  at  my  English  here. 
Funny,  that,  eh?  Shows  what  the  Entente  Cordiale 
has  accomplished,  eh?  Well,  Sir,  over  there  a  light 
or  two  came  over  me;  your  fashionable  lot  over  here 
in  London  speak  much  better  French  than  they  do 
United  States.  Fact !  Why,  if  I  could  talk  the  real, 
genuwine  Hanover  Square  French,  same  as  some  of 
your  Bond  Street  swells  do,  I'd  live  in  Paris  all  the 
time,  and  get  mistaken  for  a  milord. 

"Another  thing  you  can  see  in  Paris  that  you  can't 
see  in  London,  and  that's  well-dressed  English- 
women. There  are  none  in  London,  you  take  my 
solemn  word!  They're  all  in  Paris!  That's  one 
thing  I'd  never  have  found  out  if  I  hadn't  staid  on 
this  side  until  after  the  other  Americans  had  gone 
back;  the  real  swell  lot  from  here  only  go  to  Paris 
early  in  spring  or  in  the  winter;  it's  too  thick  with 
Americans  for  them  in  the  summer.  Say — this 
hands-across-the-sea  business  is  great  stuff,  eh? 
Honest,  though,  I  don't  blame  you  much;  some  of 
the  Americans  that  get  into  the  limelight  on  this  side 
are  the  limit !  I'm  thinking  of  a  sight  I  saw  at  the 
Gare  St.  Lazare  the  other  morning,  waiting  for  a 
boat-train.  She  was  a  dream  in  purple,  and  she  had 
a  purple  bow  around  her  pup's  neck,  and  if  I  hadn't 
known  she  was  a  vaudeville  artist  I'd  have  made  the 
same  mistake  the  people  in  Paris  were  making,  and 
that  was  thinking  all  American  women  dressed  on 
that  same  key  of  X.  How  are  people  to  know  the 
difference? 

uAnd,  say,  there's  another  thing  I'd  like  to  talk 


LONDON  285 

to  you  about  when  you  have  time  some  day.  That's 
the  exact  definition  of  the  week-end.  As  far  as  I 
can  see,  the  only  sure  thing  is  that  it  means  the  large 
end  of  the  week.  IVe  watched  this  thing  pretty 
close,  and  my  conclusion  is  that  the  London  business 
man  only  works  from  about  Tuesday  noon  to  Thurs- 
day P.  M.  How  do  I  make  that  out?  Well,  I've 
been  through  some  pretty  stiff  doses  of  Whitmon- 
days,  August  Bank  holidays,  Michaelmas  Gooses, 
and  all  the  other  festivals,  and  I've  noticed  that 
when  your  lawyer  or  stockbroker,  etc.,  says  he's  go- 
ing away  for  the  week-end,  it  means  that  he's  leaving 
Thursday  evening  and  not  showing  up  again  until 
Tuesday  morning.  Yes,  Sir;  it's  the  large  end  he 
takes,  all  right,  all  right.  And  then,  if  you  please, 
he  gets  hot  under  the  collar  because  the  American 
or  the  German  gets  a  little  business  away  from  him 
here  and  there.  Oh,  you're  a  funny  lot  here — if  you 
only  knew  it.  Yes,  Sir;  you  are  to  laugh;  you  are  to 
laugh.  Which,  of  course,  is  meant  as  a  translation 
from  Hanover  Street  French.  Hanover  Street 
French  is  what  your  man  George  Graves  is  so  fond 
of  getting  off  when  he  says  'Je  ne  pense  pas,'  which 
is  a  rotten  translation  of  'I  don't  think.'  Yes,  I 
know  it's  not  American;  it's  straight  Dickens;  but 
then  a  chap  like  you  wouldn't  know  any  more  about 
Dickens  than  about  the  Abbey  or  Stratford-on- 
Ayvon — " 

"Stratf  ord-on-Ayvon  ?" 

"You  mean  Avon." 

"Oh,  rhymes  with  spavin,  does  it?  All  right. 
Say,  look,  there  goes  a  boy  from  E-ton ;  I  can  tell  by 
his  clothes." 


286  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

"From  where?" 

"E-ton;  rhymes  with  bon-ton,  accent  on  the  'ton,' 
doesn't  it?" 

"No;  don't  you  see,  it's  just  Eton." 

uOh — rhymes  with  meetin',  eh?  dropping  the  'g' 
carefully  at  the  same  time  as  the  voice,  and  otherwise 
duly  concealing  the  alphabet  as  much  as  possible. 
Well,  well,  say — "  and  the  American  pulled  up  his 
horse  to  pass  out  of  the  Marble  Arch  gateway. 

"Ain't  it  great  we  speak  the  same  language?" 


CHAPTER    NINE 

WHEN    EUROPE    COMES   TO   AMERICA 

I 
FIRST  PRINCIPLES  FOR  EUROPEANS 

A1ERICANS  returning  to  the  United  States 
in  the  luxuriousness  of  "first  class"  must, 
if    they    are     accustomed    travelers     by 
the   Atlantic    ferries,   have   noticed   that 
of    late    they    by    no    means    had    the     ship    to 
themselves.    Year  by  year  the  number  of  Europeans 
who  have  determined  to  explore  these  United  States, 
as  of  old  they  had  explored  Tibet,  or  Egypt,  or  Al- 
giers, or  the  east  coast  of  Africa,  has  been  increas- 
ing steadily.     We  have  long  known,  of  course,  that 
the  fashionable  tide  has  swung  both  ways  for  many 
years;  the  more  or  less  aristocratic  or  titled  person- 
ages who  come  to  be  dined  and  wined,  and,  if  pos- 
sible, wedded,  have  long  been  familiar  figures  in  a 
tiny  section  of  our  continent. 

Yet  these  did  not  constitute  real  travelers.  They 
came  to  Newport  or  Bar  Harbor  or  Lenox  without 
finding  out  more  about  our  great  country  than  many 
Americans  discover  about  Germany  after  a  "cure" 
in  Baden-Baden  or  Kissingen  or  Wiesbaden.  But, 
as  aforesaid,  real  travelers  have  begun  to  put  in 
their  appearance.  The  more  eagle-eyed  of  our  ob- 

287 


288  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

servers  may  or  may  not  have  noted  them;  but  the 
steamship  companies  must  have  become  pleasantly 
aware  of  them;  and  our  friend  Baedeker  long  ago 
stamped  their  existence  definitely  with  his  rosy  ap- 
proval. 

How  many  of  you,  I  wonder,  are  aware  of  the 
existence  of  what  to  an  American  should  be  the  most 
fascinating  of  all  the  volumes  in  the  famous  Leipsic 
series,  namely,  that  entitled  "Baedeker's  United 
States?"  Yes,  here  it  is;  almost  uncannily  up  to 
date;  and  giving  the  most  cosmopolitan  and  inter- 
nationally minded  of  us  something  of  a  shock  of 
pleasure  and  surprise.  In  diplomatic  complications, 
in  great  international  relationships,  we  have  for  a 
few  years  been  duly  recognized  by  the  European 
concert;  we  have  come,  politically,  to  rank  as  a  world 
power;  and  now  we  are  obviously  admitted  into  the 
ranks  of  the  lands  worth  visiting.  We  may  prepare, 
then,  for  an  annually  increasing  army  of  Europeans 
approaching  these  United  States  of  ours  armed  with 
argonautic  courage  and  a  guidebook.  We,  going 
forth  to  browse  about  Europe  as  upon  a  pleasant 
pasture,  are  no  longer  to  have  it  all  our  own  way. 
The  European  will  be  popping  over  here  just  as 
brazenly  as  we  now  pop  over  to  his  country.  We 
have  definitely  joined  the  ranks  of  countries  to  be 
seen. 

We  have  been  listed,  summed  up,  mapped,  and 
planned. 

There  is  a  price  upon  our  very  habits;  henceforth 
the  European  may  easily  reckon  just  what  it  will  cost 
to  visit  us,  to  see  our  great  cities,  the  wonderful  nat- 
ural picturesqueness  of  our  land;  and  he  can  find, 


EUROPE  COMES  TO  AMERICA     289 

upon  a  definite  page  in  an  easily  pocketable  little 
book,  the  safest  behavior  to  adopt  in  our  presence. 
No  longer  can  we  pretend  to  be  a  country  of  un- 
tracked  wastes,  of  a  great  American  Desert,  of  plain, 
uncharted  materialism;  no  longer  can  the  New  Zea- 
lander  or  the  Chinaman  accuse  us  of  being  beyond 
the  pale  of  civilized  travel.  The  world  seems  all 
turned  upside  down  as  one  reads  in  a  guidebook  the 
travel  instructions,  especially  for  conduct  upon  the 
Atlantic,  addressed  to  people  coming  to  rather  than 
going  from  these  shores. 

To  see  our  essentials,  our  scope,  our  riches,  our 
cities,  our  mountains,  and  our  plains  all  done  up  in 
a  single,  tiny  pair  of  covers,  gives,  no  matter  how 
much  or  how  little  we  have  traveled,  as  say  our 
friends  the  French,  most  mightily  to  think. 

Each  old  traveler,  paging  through  such  a  guide- 
book, will  find  a  different  point  for  comment,  for  ad- 
miration, for  amazement,  and  even  for  dispute. 
Hardly  any  traveler,  however,  with  a  reasonable 
sense  of  proportion,  but  will  find  constant  source  of 
amusement.  Nothing  seems  to  have  been  left  undone 
in  the  way  of  information;  there  are  introductory 
pages  on  our  history,  our  Government,  our  aborigi- 
nes, our  physiography,  our  climate,  our  arts,  our 
sports,  our  educational  and  industrial  resources — oh, 
it  is  all  there  in  a  nutshell. 

And  in  no  less  than  one  hundred  and  twenty  differ- 
ent tours  and  routes  are  our  States  cut  up  to  make  a 
European  holiday.  It  has  always  seemed  proper 
enough  to  find  the  various  routes  from,  say,  Naples 
to  Paris,  set  forth  in  the  cold-blooded  guidebook  man- 
ner; but  it  had  hardly  occurred  to  us  that  the  same 


290  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

thing  could  be  done  for  the  trip  from  New  York  to 
Chicago ;  from  New  Orleans  to  El  Paso ;  from  Bos- 
ton to  Montreal.  There  were  always,  we  know  well 
enough,  the  so-called  railroad  "folders,"  but  those 
were  distinctly  inadequate  specimens  of  the  "boost- 
er's" art. 

Our  poetic  friends,  the  real  estate  agents,  occasion- 
ally did  a  little  in  this  way;  but  the  trail  of  picayune 
profit  was  somewhat  traitorously  over  such  ventures. 
Say  what  you  will  against  him,  despise  him  as  you 
please,  as  a  propagandist  of  travel,  Baedeker  is  noth- 
ing less  than  continental.  He  does  not  descend  to 
the  petty;  does  not  spoil  his  judicial  fairness  by  pan- 
dering to  small  condescensions  toward  commerce. 
Observe  his  little  warning,  which  comes  in  somewhat 
pat  at  this  moment : 

"To  hotel  proprietors,  tradesmen,  and  others  the 
editor  begs  to  intimate  that  a  character  for  fair  deal- 
ing and  courtesy  toward  travelers  is  the  sole  pass- 
port to  his  commendation,  and  that  advertisements 
of  every  kind  are  strictly  excluded  from  his  hand- 
books." 

Bully  for  B !  Most  exactly  he  hits  a  nail  on  the 
head.  In  the  detail  of  literature  the  present  writer 
once  propounded  the  identical  theory:  namely,  that 
no  proper  criticism  was  to  be  expected  from  the  aver- 
age newspaper  until  the  advertisement  of  the  pub- 
lishers ceased.  Against  which  it  was  invariarbly 
averred  that  such  an  omission  would  be  extremely 
ruinous  business  for  the  newspapers.  Well,  the 
Baedeker  concern,  one  imagines,  is  not  exactly  bank- 
rupt. 


EUROPE  COMES  TO  AMERICA     291 

THE  general  tone,  both  in  the  introductions  and 
the  body  of  the  guide  itself,  is  most  happily  balanced. 
European  prejudices  do  not  seem  unduly  catered  to ; 
on  many  points  one  believes  that  Americans  at  large 
would  profit  greatly  by  this  notion  of  how  others 
see  them.  There  is,  for  instance,  no  effort  to  decide 
the  vexed  question  of  comfort  in  railway  travel — 
European  or  American.  But  this  observation  is 
made  about  our  day  coaches : 

"A  single,  crying  infant  or  spoiled  child  annoys 
sixty  to  seventy  persons  instead  of  the  few  in  one 
compartment;  the  passenger  has  little  control  over 
his  window,  as  some  one  is  sure  to  object  if  he  opens 
it;  the  window  opens  upward  instead  of  downward; 
the  continual  opening  and  shutting  of  the  doors,  with 
the  consequent  draughts,  are  annoying;  the  incessant 
visitation  of  the  train  boy,  with  his  books,  candy,  and 
other  articles  for  sale,  renders  a  quiet  nap  almost 
impossible ;  while,  in  the  event  of  an  accident,  there 
are  only  two  exits  for  sixty  people  instead  of  six  or 
eight.  On  the  other  hand,  the  liberty  of  moving 
about  the  car,  or,  in  fact,  from  ertd  to  end  of  the 
train,  the  toilette  accommodations,  and  the  amuse- 
ment of  watching  one's  fellow-passengers  greatly 
mitigate  the  tedium  of  a  long  journey;  while  the  pub- 
licity prevents  any  risk  of  the  railway  crimes  some- 
times perpetrated  in  the  separate  compartments  of 
the  European  system.  .  .  ." 

These  details  are  to  us  such  commonplaces,  so 
closely  familiar,  that  we  occasionally  lose  our  per- 
spective about  them.  The  point  about  the  train  boy 
is  well  taken;  and  one  is  glad  to  note  that  some  of 


292  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

our  wideawake  railways  no  longer  permit  that  in- 
cessant pest. 

I  wonder,  by  the  way,  when  the  plague  of  plush 
seats,  in  torridest  summer,  will  be  made  to  cease. 

The  hint  at  a  European  desire  for  fresh  air,  how- 
ever, is  funny;  it  becomes  logical  only  when  we  recall 
that  this  guide  is  written  mostly  for  English  travelers. 
Whosoever  has  traveled  much  on  the  Continent  of 
Europe  knows  that  there  is  nothing  the  average 
French  or  German  or  Italian  traveler  clings  to  more 
fiercely  than  his  right  to  exclude  fresh  air  from  the 
railway  compartment. 

A  similar  thought  occurs  when  our  friend  hands 
out  the  following  hints  to  such  American  hotel  keep- 
ers as  may  wish  to  "meet  the  tastes  of  European 
visitors" : 

"The  wash  basins  in  the  bedrooms  should  be  much 
larger  than  is  generally  the  case.  ...  A  carafe 
or  jug  of  drinking  water  (not  necessarily  iced)  and 
a  tumbler  should  always  be  kept  in  each  bedroom. 
If  it  were  possible  to  give  baths  more  easily  and 
cheaply,  it  would  be  a  great  boon  to  English  visitors. 
It  is  not,  fortunately,  more  usual  than  of  yore  for  the 
price  of  a  bedroom  to  include  access  to  a  general 
bathroom,  but  those  who  wish  a  private  bath  in  or 
attached  to  their  bedroom  must  still  pay  about  a 
dollar  a  day  extra.  No  hotel  can  be  considered  first- 
class  or  receive  an  asterisk  of  commendation  that  re- 
fuses to  supply  food  to  travelers  who  are  prevented 
from  appearing  at  the  regular  meal  hours." 

Well  threatened,  indeed,  that  last!  Behold  the 
bludgeoning  of  Baedeker!  He  would  withhold  the 


EUROPE  COMES  TO  AMERICA     293 

great  asterisk.  For  generations  has  it  not  been  the 
ambition  of  every  European  hotel — and,  for  all  we 
know  to  the  contrary,  every  European  artist,  from 
Praxitiles  to  Puvis  de  Chavannes — to  be  "starred  in 
Baedeker?"  Well,  here,  then,  is  the  ultimatum  for 
our  own  hotels.  Let  them  take  warning.  The  Eu- 
ropeon  traveler  has  a  guidebook  now,  and  the  erst- 
while autocratic  demeanor  of  the  hotelier  and  his 
allies  may  have  to  curb  itself  a  little. 

The  touch  about  the  Englishman  in  search  of  his 
bath  is  somewhat  anciently  flavored,  however.  Why 
try  to  perpetuate  that  stale  legend?  We  know,  if 
we  know  anything  at  all  about  travel,  that  baths  are 
almost  as  hard  to  obtain  in  England  as  elsewhere  in 
Europe;  the  Englishman  may  be  as  hardy  a  bather 
as  any  of  us  in  the  privacy  of  his  own  home,  but  no 
sign  of  any  such  habit  is  apparent  in  his  hotels.  The 
only  country  of  real  indoor  bathing  facilities  is  our 
own;  let  that  be  set  down  definitely,  once  and  for  all. 

The  Englishman  and  his  bath  have  long  been  a 
ridiculous  myth.  Years  ago  it  was  one  of  his  insular 
vanities — one  of  his  ways  of  insulting  all  the  rest  of 
the  world — to  travel  with  a  monstrous  tin  bathtub 
among  his  paraphernalia.  He  would  set  that  tiny 
oasis  upon  a  desert  of  floor;  have  innumerable  jugs 
of  water  emptied  into  the  tin  contrivance;  immerse 
the  edges  of  himself  therein,  and  go  forth  purged,  in 
his  own  mind,  of  all  his  sins  and  convinced  of  the 
filthiness  of  all  alien  creation.  The  German  achieved 
the  same  result  in  his  sitz-bad.  The  Frenchman, 
save  as  an  adjunct  to  wine  or  syrups  or  a  fashionable 
bathing  beach,  has  not  yet  discovered  the  uses  of 
water.  No,  no ;  let  us  have  no  more  talk  about  any 


294  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

country  save  the  United  States  knowing  the  real  way 
to  the  bathroom. 

ANOTHER  detail  of  railway  travel  here.  We  are 
reminded  that  uno  alcoholic  drinks  are  served  while 
the  train  is  passing  through  prohibition  States*  (now 
somewhat  numerous)."  True,  alas!  how  true! 
Yet,  if  one  could  ornament  a  practical  guide  such  as 
this  with  the  illuminating  poetry  of  personal  expe- 
rience !  For,  as  has  been  often  enough  pointed  out, 
one  result  of  the  prohibition  has  merely  been  the 
additional  debauchery  of  the  colored  brother. 

Upon  the  average  through  express,  under  such 
circumstances,  the  wary  traveler  knows  perfectly 
well  all  he  need  do,  if  his  thirst  take  a  certain  fiery 
shape;  he  has  but  to  tap  on  the  door  where  the  por- 
ter of  the  club  car  slumbers  and  ask  for  a  little  ginger 
pop.  Out  will  come  the  ginger  pop,  the  sarsapa- 
rilla — it  might  be  either,  to  judge  by  the  bottle — and 
down  will  gurgle  the  fire  water.  Cinquevalli  could 
do  no  finer  juggling.  You  pay  an  exorbitant  price 
for  very  filthy  liquor;  you  cannot  complain,  because 
you  are  breaking  the  law,  and  so  is  the  darky — and 
the  whole  business  is  detrimental  to  public  morality. 
But  we  must  not  tell  Mr.  Baedeker  about  that;  our 
morals,  happily,  do  not  interest  him.  Wise  men, 
these  Buddhas  and  Baedekers! 

NOTE  again,  this:  uln  America  the  traveler  is 
left  to  rely  upon  his  own  common  sense  still  more 
freely  than  in  England,  and  no  attempt  is  made  to 
take  care  of  him  in  the  patriarchal  fashion  of  Con- 
tinental railways.  He  should,  therefore,  be  careful 


EUROPE  COMES  TO  AMERICA     295 

to  see  that  he  is  is  in  the  proper  car,  etc.  .  .  .  The 
brakeman  or  trainman,  whose  duty  it  is  to  announce 
each  station  as  the  train  reaches  it,  is  apt  to  be  en- 
tirely unintelligible."  For  years  we  have  laughed 
at  these  popular  jests ;  we  were  in  danger  of  becoming 
too  accustomed  to  them ;  it  may  be  wholesome  to  find 
them  pointed  out,  soberly  and  in  cold  blood,  as  actual 
detriments  to  perfectly  comfortable  travel. 

But  the  "partriarchal  fashion  of  Continental  rail- 
ways!" Oh,  Du  meine  Seele,  yes,  indeed!  Who 
that  in  the  old  days  ever  journeyed  on  a  bummel-zug 
through  Pomerania  or  Mecklenburg  but  recalls 
that  scene  when  the  station  master  and  the  conductor, 
having  had  every  door  in  the  train  hermetically  sealed 
so  that  no  passenger  could  escape,  walked  up  and 
down  the  platform  in  solemn  conclave  for  at  least 
ten  minutes.  If  the  passengers  were  naive  they 
imagined  great  railroad  problems  being  solved;  if 
they  were  sophisticated  they  guessed  the  conversa- 
tion to  be  about  nothing  more  exciting  than  the 
weather.  As  in  the  caricature  showing  two  monarchs 
chatting;  the  world,  straining  to  listen,  fancies  the 
peace  of  Europe  in  dispute  between  them;  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  one  is  saying  to  the  other:  "Edward, 
who's  your  tailor?" 

WHAT  echoes  of  laughter  arise  at  the  start  of  the 
paragraph  on  pedestrianism:  "Except  in  a  few  dis- 
tricts, such  as  the  Adirondacks  and  the  White  Moun- 
tains, walking  tours  are  not  much  in  vogue  in  the 
United  States,"  says  our  informant,  "where,  indeed, 
the  extremes  of  temperature  and  the  scarcity  of  well- 
marked  footpaths  often  offer  considerable  obstacles." 


296  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

To  say  nothing  of  the  attitude  of  the  inhabitants! 
Can  you  not  see  the  face  of  the  average  American 
farmer  if  you  arrived  at  the  door  while  on  a  walking 
tour?  No;  we  cannot  rank  as  a  nation  of  walkers. 
On  the  other  hand,  as  this  same  critic  points  out, 
you  can  trolley  almost  all  the  way  from  New  York 
to  Chicago.  That's  the  way  we  do  our  walking — 
hanging  on  to  a  strap.  A  thousand  pities  it  is  that 
we  do  not  walk  more.  No  motor,  no  conveyance  of 
any  sort  whatever  can  equal  the  pleasure  of  touring 
afoot  through  Switzerland,  the  English  lakes,  or 
Thueringen,  or  the  Hartz  or  Tuscany,  or  any  of  the 
many  beauty  districts  of  the  older  civilization.  Have 
we  not  quite  as  many  fine  regions?  If  we  had  not 
known  it  before,  this  little  guide  would  open  our 
eyes.  The  regions  are  there ;  but  what  is  fatal  is  the 
attitude  of  our  Americans  themselves,  those  who 
should  do  the  walking  and  those  who  might  do  the 
helping  along  the  way.  As  long  as  the  National 
attitude  toward  pedestrianism  is  that  it  is  a  peculiar 
form  of  lunacy,  or  the  result  of  a  wager,  so  long  shall 
we  not  rank  as  completely  cognizant  of  our  opportu- 
nities for  vagabondage. 

MANY  details  of  our  language  are  evidently 
thought  dark  for  Europeans.  So  there  has  been 
compiled  a  glossary  of  words  which  we  use  in  a  way 
uncommon  elsewhere.  Among  these  we  find:  "Team 
— often  applied  to  one  horse."  Applause,  please, 
applause  for  the  massive  brain  from  Leipsic!  Yea 
and  verily,  the  land  is  full  of  places  where  a  team  is 
a  single  horse.  It  ranks  with  that  other  fine  rustic 
formula :  "Fine  hitch  you  got  there,  Eli,"  A  hitch 


EUROPE  COMES  TO  AMERICA     297 

meaning,  apparently,  the  same  thing  as  uteam." 
Hitch,  in  that  sense,  is  not  yet  in  the  Baedeker  glos- 
sary of  United  States  phrases.  Another  matter  of 
language  is  the  pronunciation  of  Chicago  here  given 
as  prevalent.  It  is  indicated  thus :  Shikawgo.  Now, 
may  we  venture  to  doubt  that  such  is  the  sound  used 
by,  shall  we  say,  the  best  people?  It  may  be  dan- 
gerous to  attack  Chicago's  own  usage,  which,  nine 
times  out  of  ten,  is  as  given  above;  but — well,  it  is 
one  of  those  matters  of  taste;  and  it  does  not  seem 
as  if  "awgo"  was  anything  but  an  unnecessarily  ugly 
sound.  Further  on  this  same  authority  reminds  us 
that  the  name  arose  from  the  Indian  Checagua, 
meaning  "wild  onion"  and  "polecat."  In  such 
strange  ways,  you  see,  we  come  to  memories  of  the 
stench  characteristic  of  the  Chicago  River. 

Each  traveler  will  have  his  own  quarrel  with  a 
guidebook,  yet  all  must  admit  some  marvels  it  ac- 
complishes. One  finds  no  canal  route  named,  for 
instance,  between  Philadelphia  and  Baltimore,  yet  a 
traveler  told  the  other  day  of  one  of  the  most  comic 
incidents  on  that  route.  He  had  heard  of  it  as  a 
scenic  route;  arrived  to  undertake  it,  and  then  found 
only  night  boats  running.  This  guide  says  nothing 
of  the  part  St.  Joseph,  in  Missouri,  played  in  the  out- 
fitting of  the  California  pioneers.  It  does  not  add 
the  name  of  Adirondack  Murray  to  those  connected 
with  Guilford,  Conn.  English  interest  might  have 
cared  for  mention  of  the  Lords  Say  and  Seal,  and 
Fenwick,  with  the  name  Saybrook.  In  the  list  of  race 
courses,  that  of  Pimlico,  in  Maryland,  is  omitted; 
yet  that  is  now  almost  the  only  fort  left  on  the  At- 
lantic coast  to  those  who  like  their  racing  undiluted. 


298  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

Nor  among  the  hunt  clubs  are  any  of  the  Green 
Spring  Valley  clubs  given — the  Elkridge  Hunt,  the 
Patapsco,  or  the  Green  Spring  itself.  On  one  page 
the  following  pleasant  paragraph  concludes  with  an 
error: 

"Times  Square,  the  center  of  club  and  theater 
land.  In  the  middle  stands  the  building  of  The  New 
York  Times.  The  tower  (twenty-six  stories)  is  363 
feet  high.  The  outside  walls  are  of  pink  granite  and 
terra-cotta,  and  the  interior  is  finely  fitted  up.  Be- 
neath it  is  a  station  of  the  New  York  Subwray.  On 
the  corner  of  Forty-fourth  Street  rises  the  huge 
Astor  House.'' 

On  an  earlier  page  the  Astor  House  and  the  Hotel 
Astor  had  been  dissociated  properly  enough,  so  the 
above  is  plainly  only  an  error  in  print.  Lincoln, 
Neb.,  is  named  as  having  educational  and  penal  in- 
stitutions, but  the  presence  of  Mr.  Bryan  is  not 
named  in  either  category.  On  another  page  a  phrase 
of  Henry  James'  is  quoted  as  summing  up  the  Saint- 
Gaudens  statue  of  General  Sherman  on  the  Fifty- 
ninth  Street  plaza;  a  figure  of  dauntless  refinement 
it  seems  Mr.  James  called  it;  and  for  the  soldier 
who  said  war  was  hell,  that  seems  a  singularly  inap- 
propriate line. 

However,  as  already  observed,  we  may  cavil  as 
we  please,  the  thing  we  must  do,  after  all  that,  is  to 
admit  that  the  thing  has  been  done  excellently.  Our 
splendid  cities,  our  magnificent  landscapes,  our  Rock- 
ies, and  our  rivers,  our  wealth  and  our  climate  are  all 
exposed  and  labeled  here,  so  that  all  who  run  over 
from  Europe  may  read.  Whether  it  is  Fifth  Avenue 


EUROPE  COMES  TO  AMERICA     299 

or  the  Cliff  Walk  at  Newport  that  the  European 
wishes  to  inspect,  by  aid  of  this  volume  he  can  pick 
out  all  the  notable  spots,  the  homes  of  all  the  notable 
people.  If  we  thought  before  now  that  we  had  noth- 
ing to  show  the  foreigner,  one  look  at  this  guide  will 
convince  otherwise.  We  are  somewhat  crowded  to 
get  into  one  volume,  but  some  day,  no  doubt,  we  will 
deserve  two. 

MEANWHILE  a  great  responsibility  falls  upon 
every  one  of  us.  If  we  are  no  longer  immune  from 
the  foreign  tourist  horde,  if  the  German  and  the 
Frenchman  and  the  Italian  and  the  Englishman  of 
idleness  and  means  is  hereafter  to  revisit  upon  us 
something  of  the  insulting  and  supercilious  inspection 
we  have  in  times  past  bestowed  upon  his  own  lands, 
why,  then  we  will  have  to  get  ready  to  receive. 

Has  it  ever  occurred  to  you  to  contrast  what  Eu- 
rope does  for  us,  in  the  way  of  reception,  with  what 
we  do  for  "those  others?"  The  contrast  is  wide 
enough.  They  learn  our  language  and  they  cater  to 
our  ways,  but  there  is  not  one  of  them  who  can  go 
to  the  average  hotel  or  railway  or  police  official  here 
in  the  United  States  and  find  any  knowledge  of  any 
other  tongue  than  English.  You  have  read  the  an- 
nouncement that  a  certain  number  of  Paris  police- 
men were  also  required  to  be  interpreters.  You 
don't  catch  us  doing  much  of  that. 

Our  argument  has  been  that  Europe  was  a  poverty- 
stricken  place,  and  they  had  to  cater  to  us  to  earn 
a  living.  The  argument  will  not  wash.  We  have 
now  been  added  to  the  Who's  Who  of  travel  coun- 
tries, and  we  must  do  the  civilized  thing.  Our  hotels 


300  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

will  have  to  attempt  a  little  study  of  European  tastes, 
a  little  smattering  of  their  tongues.  In  every  possible 
way  we  must  try  to  realize  that  we  are  now  among 
those  present  when  the  tourist  of  Cosmopolis  takes 
out  his  map  of  the  world  and  asks  himself  whom 
next  he  shall  visit. 

The  table,  like  the  inevitable  wheel  of  fortune, 
has  begun  to  turn.  We  may  prepare  for  tourists 
from  Europe,  each  with  his  little  red  book,  coming  in 
swarms  to  peep  at  us  and  our  strange  ways.  Singly 
or  in  groups  they  will  come ;  omnibuses  full  of  them 
may  halt  before  long  in  Times  Square  and  have  the 
scenery  and  the  passing  throng  explained  to  them 
in  the  dialect  of  Paris  or  Berlin  or  Cockaigne.  For 
we  cannot  use  the  Monroe  Doctrine  to  defeat  the 
world's  lust  for  travel. 

II 

OUR   CAPITAL   GATEWAY 

IT  is  not  my  intention  to  do  more  than  indicate 
some  of  the  first  guideposts  and  gateways  to  our 
great  country.  To  give  to  the  European  visitor  even 
no  more  than  glimpses  of  our  continent  comes  into 
that  informative  province  to  which  I  make  no  pre- 
tensions. Just  a  few  remarks  upon  the  human  com- 
edy as  it  passes  through  a  typical  American  gateway 
of  travel;  just  a  brief  disquisition  upon  a  distinctly 
American  specimen  of  the  Personally  Conducted 
urban  tour;  and  I  am  done. 

OF  adequate  gateways,  of  railway  stations  to  com- 


EUROPE  COMES  TO  AMERICA     301 

pare  with  those  in  Dresden,  in  Frankfurt,  in  York  or 
many  another  European  town,  we  had  not,  until 
lately,  much  to  show.  At  last,  however,  in  Boston, 
in  New  York,  and  in  Washington,  we  have  such  gate- 
ways to  our  continental  travel  of  which  not  even  the 
richest  country  in  the  world  need  be  ashamed.  The 
less  we  say  of  the  past,  the  better.  For  many  years 
New  York  had  not  one  adequate  railway  station; 
Philadelphia  was  somewhat  better  off;  but  if  Balti- 
more has  the  stations  it  deserves,  then  it  has  never 
been  a  deserving  town.  As  for  what  happens  when 
you  pass  south  of  Washington,  or  west,  it  is  better 
to  keep  silence. 

Let  us  take  the  station  at  Washington,  a  govern- 
ment, not  a  private  enterprise,  as  our  typical  gate- 
way. Into  that  great  cave  of  the  winds  converge  all 
the  trains  that  are  to  radiate  eventually  to  furthest 
corners  of  the  south  and  west.  As  for  a  typical  time 
in  which  to  make  our  observations,  let  us  choose  the 
spring,  when  all  America  is  passing  southward 
through  that  channel. 

Even  the  European  gateways  fall  into  insignifi- 
cance against  these  vast  marble  halls  on  the  banks  of 
the  Potomac.  Only  in  the  newest  of  the  stations  in 
New  York  is  there  such  magnificent  sense  of  space 
and  time.  As  train  after  train  pours  in  it  seems  to 
pour  into  illimitable  void.  The  range  of  gates  that 
greet  the  issuing  passenger  are  like  the  horizon- 
touching  pinnacles  of  some  awful  prison  stockade; 
you  look  in  vain  for  the  end;  the  fence  goes  on  and  on 
as  far  as  the  eye  can  follow.  In  the  rotundas  you 
have  the  sense  of  space  and  height  that  fills  you 
as  you  crane  your  neck  in  St.  Peter's  in  Rome,  or  the 


302  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

Duomo  in  Milan.  The  crowds  of  human  beings 
seem  like  tiny  ants  crawling.  Steps  and  voices  re- 
sound in  echoes  as  if  you  were  in  some  mighty  cavern 
of  the  earth. 

If  we  may,  for  the  sake  of  whimsy,  endow  a  rail- 
way train  with  intelligence,  this  station  at  the  capital 
must  radiate  a  certain  sense  of  splendid  satisfaction. 
For  this  quarter  of  an  hour — we  may  imagine  these 
trains  sighing  to  themselves — we  taste  of  luxury. 
Here,  for  once  at  least  on  our  long  journey,  we  taste 
of  spacious  comfort;  here  we  have  room  and  to 
spare;  here  are  all  the  needful  conveniences,  and 
even  some  superfluous  ones.  It  is  hard  not  to  give 
way  to  philosophy  in  such  a  place.  It  has  compressed 
within  it  all  the  wisdom  and  experience  of  the  past 
and  present,  and  it  hopes  to  keep  pace  with  the  com- 
ing years.  What  to-day  may  seem  too  large,  too 
empty,  is  nothing  but  the  forethinking  present's  host- 
age against  the  future.  When  we  are  dust,  and  when 
to-day's  machinery  is  rust,  those  magnificent  spaces 
will  be  as  crowded,  no  doubt,  as  were  any  one  of  the 
absurd  little  hives  we  called  railway  stations  a  gen- 
eration ago.  All  those  manifold  conveniences  of 
home,  the  barber  shops,  the  special  platforms  for 
motor  cars,  and  all  the  rest  will  be  as  full  as  now 
they  are  empty. 

But  this  philosophy  leads  us  far  astray  if  it  gives 
the  impression  that  such  a  station  has  not  its  mo- 
ments of  exuberant  life.  These  come  when  the  fash- 
ionable Florida  trains  come  in.  It  is  then  that  the 
echoes  are  galvanized  into  real  activity.  Cabs  and 
motors  suddenly  pour  furry  and  fluffy  personages 
into  those  tremendous  rotundas ;  the  red-capped  por- 


EUROPE  COMES  TO  AMERICA     303 

ters  have  a  brief  period  of  labor  and  profit;  and  on 
the  long  platforms  beside  the  hissing  locomotives 
and  the  long  Pullmans  there  are  New  York  fashion- 
ables commingling  with  Washington  fashionables, 
the  social  metropolis  meeting  the  political,  and  all 
alike  bound  South. 

IT  was  there,  then,  on  one  of  those  long-covered 
lanes  beside  a  Florida  Special  that  I  walked,  the 
other  day,  with  Dundreary  Junior.  Dundreary,  as 
I  would  not  have  you  forget  and  as  is  notorious  in 
those  fashionable  parts  of  London  which  are  his 
proper  habitat,  is  a  handsome  youth  whose  eyes  wear 
an  air  of  perpetual  amazement.  He  could  look  bored 
in  several  languages,  if  he  knew  them;  but  the  only 
language  he  knows  is  the  London  version  of  our 
tongue,  and  he  uses  very  little  of  that.  His  fame  is 
in  the  silences;  a  peculiarly  British  fame.  He  lives 
up  to  a  tradition,  the  tradition  of  the  habitually  re- 
served Englishman.  As  to  whether  his  shyness  and 
his  silence  conceal  amazing  wisdom  or  sheer  stupidity 
authorities  will  eternally  differ.  What  is  quite  sure 
is  that,  save  to  his  close  intimates,  he  shows  no  other 
front  save  that  of  bored  and  blue-eyed  silence.  But 
his  popularity,  especially  over  here — this  cannot  be 
impressed  on  you  too  often ! — is  conceded  even  by 
his  enemies. 

When  last  seen  Dundreary  Junior  was  riding  the 
Ladies'  Mile  in  London.  It  seems  that  he  took  my 
tip  to  see  America,  for  here,  the  other  day,  I  had 
word  of  him  being  bound  South  after  a  too  fierce  fol- 
lowing of  the  fashionable  hunt  in  New  York,  and  so 
went  to  have  a  chat  with  him. 


304  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

The  pace,  as  gathered  from  his  staccato  speech 
(which  you  need  not  expect  to  find  reproduced  here 
with  any  sort  of  accuracy,  since  its  peculiarly  British 
beauties  prove  too  fragile  for  transmission),  had 
become  too  hot  for  him  in  New  York. 

"It  was  gettin',"  he  said,  as  we  walked  up  and 
down  among  millionaires  talking  of  motor  races  on 
Florida  beaches,  and  beautiful  women  talking  of 
the  carnival  in  New  Orleans,  "a  bit  thick.  Took  your 
tip,  don't  you  see,  to  do  a  bit  of  hig-leef  over  here. 
Not  a  bad  idea  at  all,  don't  you  see,  to  change  the 
beat  a  bit  now  and  then.  Beastly  bore,  don't  you  see, 
that  rotten  old  Riviera  and  all  that,  every  winter. 
Same  ruddy  lot  of  bounders  every  year;  nothing  new; 
might  as  well  stay  in  the  Big  Smoke.  Tired  of  hunt- 
in';  bit  bored  with  all  the  old  lot  of  people;  came 
over  here.  Rippin'  lot  of  swells  here,  no  end,  all 
right;  but  I  found  I  wasn't  trained  for  it,  not  fit 
enough,  pace  far  too  stiff.  Sure  to  come  an  awful 
cropper  if  I  kept  it  up. 

"Take  this  last  week  for  a  sample;  first  night, 
musical  tea  for  those  earthquake  Johnnies;  second 
night,  some  kind  of  a  'here's  hair'  ball  for  the  blind — 
pity  they  couldn't  have  seen  it,  too  ! — third  day  we  all 
got  ourselves  caricatured  by  one  of  these  artist  chaps 
who  do  the  lightning  cartoons  at  the  music  halls; 
fourth  day  they  do  tableaux  from  the  Rubayiat,  and 
I  had  to  look  like  a  jug  of  wine;  and  if  I  stayed 
on  another  day  I  dare  say  there'd  have  been  a  supper 
on  skates  for  the  victims  of  that  collision  at  sea. 
Killin'  pace,  I  call  it !  Awfully  lovely  parties  and  all 
that  sort  of  thing,  and  some  of  the  girls  are  a  bit  of 
all  right,  you  can  take  it  from  me ;  but  it  was  gettin' 


EUROPE  COMES  TO  AMERICA     305 

to  thick  for  me ;  I  wasn't  feelin'  just  fit  for  any  more 
of  it.  The  forecast  was  all  for  some  pretty  stiff 
doses  of  Wagner  and  Wilde,  Strauss  and  the  Rosy 
Cavalier,  too;  and  what  with  one  thing  and  another 
I  thought  I'd  better  be  off.  Pity  to  go  home  so  soon ; 
Italy  and  Sicily  and  all  that  have  gone  back  in  the 
bettin'  a  bit  lately,  and  the  Atlantic's  been  about  as 
comfortable  as  Clapham  Junction  lately.  So  I 
thought  of  Florida.  What?" 

I  had  not  said  anything,  but  "What?"  is  Dun- 
dreary Junior's  brief  way  of  asking  an  opinion  on 
his  present  plan. 

I  assured  him  he  could  not  have  done  better.  We 
continued  to  walk  up  and  down,  while  the  steam 
hissed  from  the  locomotives,  and  the  other  passen- 
gers chattered  and  fluttered.  There  were  travelers 
of  vast  international  experience  who  compared  these 
Florida  trains  with  the  Orient  Express,  or  the  Nord- 
Sud  Express,  and  you  could  hear  much  talk  of  the 
P-L-M,  and  of  the  Southern  Belle,  and  the  Flying 
Scotsman.  There  were  pillars  of  society  going  to 
Palm  Beach,  and  you  heard  the  names  of  hotels,  the 
Wreckers,  and  the  Ponta  Gorda,  and  the  Royal 
Poinsettia;  they  discussed  the  cuisine,  and  the  serv- 
ice, and  referred  to  the  sunshine  with  the  air  of 
being  able  to  pay  for  it,  and  therefore  determined 
to  get  it. 

We  were  reminded  of  the  dear  old  soul  who  went 
to  one  of  those  cure-resorts  chiefly  renowned  for 
their  air  and  their  temperature,  and,  having  surveyed 
her  hotel  room,  turned  to  her  servant  with,  "John, 
open  the  window  and  let  in  the  climate!"  There 
were  other  fashionables  going  to  Aiken,  and  Pine- 


306  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

hurst,  and  the  Warm  Springs.  Healthy  looking  men 
discussed  quail  shooting  in  Carolina  and  duck  shoot- 
ing in  Texas.  You  heard  the  uses  and  beauties  of 
the  i6-gauge  gun  compared  with  the  12-gauge,  and 
the  hammerless  with  the  older  type.  There  were 
early  birds  making  for  the  Mardi  Gras  at  New  Or- 
leans, determined  to  forestall  the  terrific  rush  that 
invariably  brings  discomfort  to  the  general  late- 
comer there.  There  were  those  going  to  see  Calve 
in  "Carmen"  in  Havana,  or  to  discuss  the  inaugura- 
tion of  a  Cuban  President. 

And  finally  there  were  those  who  meant  to  get  the 
outdoor  best  that  Florida  had  to  give. 

Of  these  was  Dundreary  Junior.  Although  I 
tried  to  paint  for  him  the  fashionable  Florida  of  the 
hotels,  he  did  not  respond  with  any  great  enthusiasm. 
1  drew  for  him,  in  radiant  colors  from  the  rainbow 
of  the  professional  press-agent,  the  gorgeous  gaye- 
ties  of  life  at  the  Royal  Poinsettia — and  all  the 
others.  Those  marvelous  Moorish  palaces  set  in  the 
glare  of  everlasting  sunshine;  I  tried  to  do  them 
justice;  but  conscience  rebelled  at  mentioning  the 
cuisine.  Indeed,  Dundreary  had  only  to  keep  his 
ears  open  to  discover  that  the  Florida  cuisine  is  still 
in  Punch's  category  of  things  one  would  rather  have 
done  differently.  Still,  to  the  people  who  like  to 
pay  the  most  and  get  the  least,  that  makes  little  dif- 
ference; there  is  always  more  than  one  way  of  out- 
bidding one's  neighbor.  As  the  talk  took  a  gastro- 
nomic turn,  however,  I  could  not  refrain  from 
tempting  our  friend  from  the  path  he  was  on. 


"Ir  you  would  recover  your  gastric  balance. 


"  so 


EUROPE  COMES  TO  AMERICA     307 

went  my  siren  song,  "leave  your  train  here,  come  out 
with  me  through  these  cold  and  marble  halls  and  see 
what  American  cooking  really  means.  We  have 
eaten  together  at  the  Cafe  Anglais  in  Paris,  at  Dres- 
sel's  in  Berlin,  and  Sacher's  in  Vienna;  we  have 
known  what  Hatchett's  in  Piccadilly  and  the  Bras- 
serie Universelle  can  do  in  the  way  of  a  lunch;  and 
we  once  had  coffee  together  at  the  Imperial  in  Trento, 
and  once  watched  the  lovely  ladies  from  the  Pre 
Catalan.  Now,  what  you  tasted  in  New  York  was 
worth  while,  but  not  typical;  it  was  the  essential  best 
of  all  the  other  schools  of  cooking  in  the  world;  it 
was  not  peculiarly  American. 

"If  you  want  to  know  what  American  markets  and 
American  cooking  really  afford,  you  must  visit  either 
Baltimore,  or  Washington,  or  Norfolk,  or  all  of 
them.  Walk  through  the  markets  of  Washington — 
they  are  out  there  with  the  Congressional  Library, 
and  the  Capitol,  and  the  Washington  Monument, 
and  all  the  other  sights  visited  by  the  'Seeing  Wash- 
ington's cars  that  await  the  Personally  Conducted — 
and  you  shall  see  things  to  remind  you  of  Covent 
Garden  market,  or  the  Piazza  dell'  Erbe  in  Genoa; 
things  to  make  your  mouth  water,  and  make  you 
want  to  be  an  artist  in  cookery  instead  of  only  a  fash- 
ionable young  man.  Stray  back  into  Lexington  Mar- 
ket in  Baltimore  and  see  bay  shad  and  strawberries 
and  French  endives  at  prices  that  make  you  itch  to 
start  housekeeping  on  the  spot — to  say  nothing  of 
the  adorable  women  you  will  see  there  and  want  to 
go  housekeeping  with.  Here  you  are,  racing  on  to 
Florida,  after  imaginary  alligators  and  fictitious  tar- 
pon, and  passing  one  of  the  few  towns  in  America 


308  VAGABOND   JOURNEYS 

that  is  still  a  little  unspoiled  by  the  mirage  of  too 
great  prosperity. 

"You  will  not  find  better  cooking  in  France  than 
you  will  in  Baltimore,  nor  in  Louisville  finer  mint 
juleps,  and  not  in  Buda  will  you  find  better  looking 
women.  There  are  few  legends  in  the  world  that 
our  ageing  and  our  iconoclasm  have  not  shattered, 
but  the  legend  of  the  beautiful  Baltimore  women 
comes  true  every  day  of  sunshine.  They  are  true 
Southerners,  creatures  of  warmth  and  sunshine;  if 
they  had  a  London  climate  in  that  town  you  would 
never  know  there  were  other  than  ugly  people  there; 
it  takes  the  sun  to  bring  out  those  butterflies.  An  en- 
tertaining chapter  might  be  written  on  the  hibernat- 
ing tendencies  of  the  Baltimore  belle.  .  .  ." 

At  this  exact  point  of  approaching  the  maudlin 
Dundreary  Junior  interrupted. 

"I  say,  don't  be  a  bally  idiot!  I  can't  shoot  alli- 
gators here,  can  I?" 

No;  there  are  no  alligators  in  either  Baltimore  or 
Washington;  terrapin  is  the  nearest  approach.  So, 
regretfully,  our  thoughts  were  forced  back  into  more 
practical  channels.  Yet  we  withdrew,  but  gradually, 
from  the  subject  of  food.  I  warned  my  friend  of 
what  the  future  and  Florida  had  in  store  for  him.  I 
told  him  fine  and  fragrant  old  legends  about  the  rail- 
roads in  the  South  he  would  presently  pass  through ; 
legends  of  the  chocolate  thumb  in  the  soup  plate,  and 
the  refractory  cow  on  the  track;  those  legends  have 
not  yet,  despite  the  magnificent  labels  on  the  Florida 
Limited  Specials,  quite  joined  the  ranks  of  the  ex- 


EUROPE  COMES  TO  AMERICA     309 

ploded  myths.  I  told  him  that  if  he  should  find  him- 
self sighing  for  the  fleshpots  he  was  not  likely  to  find 
them  much  nearer  than  Antoine's  in  New  Orleans. 
Then,  unwillingly,  at  long  last: 

"So  it's  the  alligator  you're  after?'* 

Now  that  the  buffalo  is  beyond  reach  of  the  man 
who,  seeing  it  is  a  fine  day,  must  go  and  kill  some- 
thing, there  is  little  left  on  our  continent  that  has 
more  fascination  than  the  alligator.  The  alligator 
will  soon  join  the  bison  and  the  American  Indian  as 
an  extinct  native;  to  protect  him  there  should  be 
Federal  and  State  legislation,  rather  than  individual 
pursuit.  My  friend's  desire,  therefore,  filled  me 
with  regret.  I  tried  to  lure  him  into  other  Florida 
enchantments;  the  tarpon,  the  canoeing  across  the 
Everglades,  capturing  manatees,  fighting  sharks  and 
swordfish,  and  even  hunting  bees.  But  he  harked 
ever  back  to  the  crocodile  and  the  alligator. 

"You  mean,"  I  rebuked  him  finally,  "the  saurian. 
Never  say  anything  but  saurian.  It  is  one  of  the 
oldest  formulas  of  Florida  that  you  must  speak  of 
saurians  as  if  they  were  relations  of  yours.  Just  as  in 
a  recent  deplorable  disaster  at  sea  you  must  always 
refer  to  'the  ill-fated  ship/  These  things  are  the 
small  change  of  conversation  that  is  safe  always  and 
everywhere.  They  are  the  cliches  of  ordinary  speech. 
Gelett  Burgess  called  them  bromides,  but  that  was 
straining  to  invent  what  already  existed;  France  long 
ago  dubbed  the  stereotyped  obvious  phrase  a  'cliche/ 
and  the  phrase  is  better  than  any  other.  Of  course, 
then,  if  you  are  determined  to  hunt  the  saurian  .  .  ." 

"One  of  your  rotten  ha'penny  paper  jokes,  I  sup- 


310  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

pose,"  said  Dundreary  Junior.  And  but  for  an 
amazingly  beautiful  girl  passing  by  at  the  moment, 
he  would  have  looked  quite  vexed. 

I  tried  to  persuade  him  that  it  was  no  joke  at  all, 
but  bitter  truth.  Drew  him  away  once  more  from 
the  fatal  subject;  painted  duck  shooting  in  the  most 
brilliant  colors,  and  went  into  raptures  over  house- 
boats that  were  like  palaces  upon  the  Florida  water- 
ways, and  yachts  that  glided  like  gorgeous  phantoms 
from  one  haven  of  luxury  to  another.  Had  him  com- 
pare the  scenery  with  his  memory  of  under  the 
deodars  in  India.  Warned  him  that  if  he  had  been 
bored  stiff  in  the  Circle  of  the  Strangers  at  Charlie's 
Mount  he  might  be  bored  still  stiffer  by  the  gambling 
in  the  melancholy  garishness  of  a  fashionable  Florida 
casino.  Asked  him  to  beware  of  catching  speed- 
mania  in  a  motor  on  the  Daytona  beach.  Yet  he  only 
made  what  our  ribald  Teuton  friend  called 

"Seelenvoll  verlass'ne  Oxenaugen" — and  came 
back  to  his  eternal  query: 

"About  those  alligators,  now?" 

So  that  it  was  actually  with  a  feeling  of  relief  that 
I  heard  the  cry  of  "All  aboard!"  watched  the  last 
pillar  of  society  pass  into  the  plushed  and  over- 
heated Pullman,  and  waved  a  hand  to  Dundreary 
Junior  with  a  final, 

"Remember  me  to  the  sunshine!" — and  saw  the 
Southern  contingent  safely  on  its  way. 


EUROPE  COMES  TO  AMERICA     311 
III 

THE  PLAIN  PEOPLE PERSONALLY  CONDUCTED 

IT  is  with  a  little  glance  at  Personal  Conducting 
that  I  would  conclude  this  book,  which  in  a  peculiar 
rather  than  a  popular  sense  has  skirted  that  phrase. 
Personal  conduct,  indeed,  seen  through  the  prejudices 
of  temperament,  is  what  has  informed  my  pages. 
Meanwhile  to  deny  the  existence,  or  the  humor,  of 
those  who  believe  in  being  Personally  Conducted,  in 
the  popular  interpretation,  is  a  mistake  I  do  not 
make.  Nor  need  a  sophisticated,  cynic  view  of  travel 
spoil  appreciation  of  the  simpler,  more  naive  spirit, 
in  which  the  majority  approaches  its  wanderings.  To 
prove  such  appreciation  still  surviving,  let  me  sketch 
such  an  urban  specimen  of  being  Personally  Con- 
ducted as  may  be  counted  typically  American,  so  that 
the  reader  may  be  soothed,  as  he  lays  this  volume 
down,  into  a  mood  of  good-natured  patriotism. 

WHILE  fashionables  and  cynics  manage  to  achieve 
the  further  places — manage,  in  short,  to  populate 
those  various  resorts  to  which  they  long  ago  lent 
their  own  adjective — the  plain  people,  without  the 
least  fear  of  being  thought  good  form  or  bad  form, 
are  bent  upon  having  in  their  own  natural  and  un- 
spoiled way  the  best  time  possible  that  travel  can 
give  them.  Little  care  they  that  others  sneer  at 
tourists;  their  natural  enthusiasm  in  all  things  seen 
and  heard  lifts  them  superior  to  small  vices  and  to 
petty  pretenses.  They  are  as  glad  to  sit  upon  a 
"sight-seeing  car,"  that  obviously  labels  them  tour- 


312  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

ists,  as  your  fashionable  friend  would  be  to  announce 
himself  a  passenger  on  a  millionaire's  private  rail- 
way car. 

Of  the  personally  conducted,  Washington  is  a  fav- 
orite American  Mecca.  We  need  not  forget  in  New 
York  those  torrid  days  of  midsummer  when  the 
Western  cousin  is  loose  in  the  land  and  invades  our 
feverish  life  with  the  breath  of  his  own  zestful  en- 
thusiasm. We  know  there  are  times  when  it  is  Niag- 
ara Falls  and  Delaware  Water  Gap  that  the  person- 
ally conducted  steer  for.  But  as  a  type  it  is  Wash- 
ington that  must  serve  our  purpose. 

The  fashionables  may  turn  up  their  noses  as  much 
as  they  like;  these  people  who  are  seeing  their  own 
country  are  not  persons  to  be  sneered  at.  All  honor 
to  these  good  folk  who  are  seeing  what  to  them  rep- 
resents the  utmost  civic  grandeur  of  America — 
Washington.  Let  them  be  fed  with  somewhat  large 
doses  of  marble  and  gilt,  and  with  somewhat  too 
bitter  a  scent  of  the  dollar;  never  mind;  having  seen 
how  splendid  our  young  Nation  is  decking  out  its 
chief  show  town,  they  are  far  more  fit  than  they  were 
to  appreciate  the  show  towns  of  another  hemisphere. 

Certainly  it  is  upon  the  American  taste  for  mag- 
nificence that  the  guides  of  the  personally  conducted 
love  to  dwell.  You  have,  if  you  wish  this  proved, 
only  to  listen  to  the  "lecturers"  in  the  "Seeing  Wash- 
ington" motor  cars.  If  you  have  a  proper  sense  of 
proportion  and  of  humor  you  will  be  vastly  profited 
by  such  an  experience.  And  the  more  sophisticated 
you  are,  the  more  thoroughly  you  know  your  Wash- 
ington, the  more  will  you  be  amused. 


EUROPE  COMES  TO  AMERICA     313 

THIS  is  going  somewhat  too  fast.  If  you  hurry 
thus  headlong  into  the  party  that  is  being  personally 
conducted  about  the  sights  of  Washington,  you  will 
have  deprived  us  of  an  opportunity  to  consider  in 
a  large  and  comparative  way  the  whole  tribe  of  the 
world's  personally  conducted.  And  it  is  by  knowing 
the  tribe  abroad  as  well  as  at  home  that  we  can  best 
appreciate  it. 

Glimpses  of  the  personally  conducted  must  cling 
to  the  memories  of  even  the  least  traveled.  You  are 
watching  the  scenery  on  the  St.  Gotthard,  let  us  sup- 
pose, and  suddenly  you  observe  that  a  sort  of  proces- 
sion is  being  led  through  the  train.  The  procession 
is  American;  there  are  good  looking  young  women 
in  it;  and  others  not  so  good  looking,  but  all  intelli- 
gent and  vivacious.  There  is  a  shepherd  to  this 
herd.  All  their  gaze  is  fixed  on  this  mountain,  then 
on  that,  and  you  discern  a  monotonous  chant  pro- 
ceeding from  the  shepherd.  They  are  personally 
conducted.  At  Fluelen  they  leave  you  and  file  upon 
the  boat,  and  then,  if  you  are  given  to  visions,  you 
know  that  every  one  of  these  good  souls  will  pres- 
ently pretend  curiosity  about  the  Lion  of  Lucerne, 
while  really  dreaming  of  the  exact  spot  where  the 
lady  of  "Three  Weeks"  leaned  over  the  balcony  and 
kissed  her  Paul.  For  not  even  the  hard  facts  of 
guidebooks  and  the  personal  conductor  can  kill  the 
romance  in  the  densest  mob  of  damsels  ever  let  loose 
by  our  schools  or  our  popularity  contests. 

Lucerne,  in  fact,  is  one  of  the  European  heavens 
for  the  personally  conducted.  From  London  the 
Polytechnic  people  send  down  droves  upon  droves; 


3i4  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

they  even  own  a  house  of  their  own  there,  where  the 
P.  C.  victims  dwell,  one  hopes,  in  perfect  accord. 
The  Swiss  in  general,  and  the  people  of  Lucerne  in 
particular,  have  brought  the  art  of  profiting  from  the 
personally  conducted  to  a  point  of  genius.  The 
Washingtonians  still  have  something  to  learn  from 
Lucerne. 

Wherever  you  go,  as  so  many  of  these  pages  have 
insisted,  a  horde  of  grim  strivers  after  knowledge  is 
likely  to  file  across  your  horizon.  A  voice  leads 
them.  You  may  be  gazing  raptly  at  some  picture 
that  is  not  starred  in  the  guidebooks,  and  the  mo- 
ment has  for  you  in  consequence  its  special  consecra- 
tion; you  feel  that  you  have  discovered  a  beauty  that 
the  others  did  not  appreciate,  you  are  gloating,  you 
are  in  the  very  ecstasy  of  selfish  adoration,  when 
suddenly  a  whisper  of  voices  and  clatter  of  feet 
come  near;  the  whispering  is  louder  somehow  in 
those  rooms  than  any  shout  could  be,  and  the  band 
of  enthusiasts  more  conspicuous  than  a  riot. 

Again  a  voice  leads  them,  they  form  a  circle  about 
that  voice,  they  stand  in  rapt  adoration  while  the 
voice  hymns  one  of  the  accepted  masterpieces.  Now 
it  is  a  Carlo  Dolci,  now  a  Raphael,  and  now  a  Man- 
tegna.  The  voice  rises,  falls,  and  finally  moves  on, 
the  circle  of  worshipers  with  it. 

In  Paris,  as  you  are  wending  your  way  to  the  Bras- 
serie Universelle  for  a  bite  of  lunch,  or  to  the  Street 
of  the  Fourth  of  September  for  a  stroll  toward  the 
Bourse,  you  find  your  way  blocked  by  a  Juggernaut. 
On  top  of  it  they  sit,  the  personally  conducted;  pres- 
ently they  will  know  more  about  Paris  than  you,  or, 
at  any  rate,  they  will  know  it  differently;  a  look  of 


EUROPE  COMES  TO  AMERICA     315 

resolve  is  upon  their  faces,  and  what  the  traveling 
American  resolves  to  obtain  he  usually  does  obtain. 

So,  wherever  you  go,  you  will  find  these  friends  of 
ours.  Yet,  here  is  a  strange  thing;  seldom  will  you 
find,  in  after  years,  one  single  soul  of  either  sex  who 
will  admit  having  "done  Europe"  in  that  fashion. 
Where  do  they  all  go  to,  these  millions  and  millions 
whom  one  has  met  in  every  corner  of  the  world, 
members  of  gangs  and  droves  and  armies?  Do  they 
suffer  immediate  translation  into  a  future  life?  Do 
they  now  tour  celestial  or  diabolic  ways? 

Do  some  of  them  now  listen  while  Gabriel  with  his 
trump  announces  all  the  sights,  and  others  while 
Lucifer  displays  a  few  moving  pictures  with  red  fire 
accompaniment?  Certain  it  is  that  no  more  than  the 
dinners  of  yesterday  are  they  now  in  our  midst. 

Can  it  be  that  in  those  ultra-sophisticated,  bored, 
and  wearied  travelers  who  told  you  only  the  other 
day  that  they  go  every  spring  to  Alassio,  you  could 
find — if  you  had  the  proper  magic  for  wiping  away 
years  and  the  lies  that  the  years  breed — those  self- 
same folk  who  first  went  out  into  the  world  per- 
sonally conducted? 

The  more  you  watch  the  traveling  world,  the  more 
will  you  be  inclined  to  answer  this  in  the  affirmative. 

AGAIN,  there  is  not  a  little  philosophy  possible  to 
consideration  of  the  many  varieties  of  personal  con- 
ducting. Aside  from  the  routine  method,  can  we  not 
make  the  phrase  stretch  easily  over  many  delightful 
ways?  And  these,  of  course,  are  the  ways  that  are 
not  down  in  any  of  the  books.  Most  of  us  have  some- 
where a  plea«an<-  page  ^f  recollection  fouching  this 


316  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

or  that  delightful  scene  over  which  we  were  guided 
by  a  friend.  That  was  being  personally  conducted, 
in  the  closest,  most  intimate  sense  of  the  word.  To 
have  seen  New  Orleans  with  one  who  knew  old 
Madame  Begue  herself,  and  who  had  sung  that  sweet 
jingle: 

There  used  to  be  a  tavern  by  the  corner  of  the  road — 

to  have  walked  over  the  battlefields  of  Chickamauga 
and  Lookout  Mountain  with  one  who  had  fought 
over  every  foot  there  and  then  had  made  each  of 
those  scenes  famous  in  literature — all  this  is  to  have 
tasted  most  sweetly  of  one  sort  of  personal  conduct- 
ing. To  have  visited  our  National  Cemetery  at  Ar- 
lington with  one  who  had  fought  among  those  now 
lying  there  so  still — this  also  is  to  have  tasted  the 
relationship  at  its  best. 

Every  other  friend,  of  course,  pretends  to  be  an 
expert  guide  to  Paris  by  night.  Why,  eternally,  by 
night  alone?  Why  must  those  wretched  members 
of  a  whispering  fraternity  on  the  Place  de  1'Opera 
suffer  so  much  amateur  competition?  Have  they  not 
enough  ill-luck  in  being  such  bad  judges  of  human 
nature?  They  have  been  known  to  accost,  day  after 
day,  for  a  week,  an  old  and  hardened  boulevardier 
for  no  other  reason  than  that  his  clothes  and  his  ap- 
pearance in  general  were  somewhat  English. 

What,  we  may  well  ask,  are  the  wonders  that  these 
whispering  genii  expose  to  those  who  engage  them? 
No  doubt  there  are  millions  of  the  personally  con- 
ducted who  could  answer  the  question,  but,  alas! 
these  are  those  same  millions  who  disappear  into 
sophistication  and  mendacity. 


EUROPE  COMES  TO  AMERICA     317 

For  a  season  or  so  perhaps  they  achieve  great 
local  renown  in  this  or  that  western  hamlet  of  the 
plain;  they  are  pointed  out  as  having  "done  Paris  up 
brown,  you  bet,"  and  the  cashier  of  their  local  bank 
winks  at  them  and  says  ugay  Paree"  now  and  then 
while  cashing  a  weekly  wage.  But  that  passes  and 
they  reach  the  scornful  state  of  those  who  pretend  to 
be  above  guides. 

As  a  matter  of  fact — or  rather  of  fiction — one  of 
those  Paris  guides  might  be  made  something  of  a  ro- 
mantic figure  in  a  novel.  Henry  Harland  gave  us 
the  broken-down  musician  who  played  the  piano  in 
a  dive;  now  the  same  thing  could  be  done  with  one 
of  those  impertinent  whisperers  on  the  corner  of  the 
Cafe  de  la  Paix. 

Quite  another  type  of  guide  to  those  wishing  to  be 
personally  conducted  about  the  rose-colored  sides  of 
the  world  is  the  little  lady  who,  if  you  have  been  wise 
enough  to  convince  her  that  you  needed  it,  has  taken 
you  by  the  hand  and  led  you  as  near  the  real  Paris 
as  your  Anglo-Saxon  temperament  has  permitted. 
Her  knowledge  is  not  in  any  of  the  books  and  never 
will  be. 

If  you  submit  yourself  properly,  and  if  you  pay  in 
the  proper  coin,  you  will  learn  things  that  neither 
Vandam  nor  Muerger  nor  Locke  nor  Harland  nor 
Du  Maurier  nor  any  of  the  others  were  able  to  tell; 
not  that  they  may  not  themselves  at  one  time  have 
known  them,  but  that  they  are  things  that  die  with 
youth,  and  that  by  the  time  you  have  come  to  con- 
sider Paris  a  rather  unkempt  and  dusty  town  of 
badly  managed  traffic  and  ill-fitting  morals,  you  will 
have  forgotten  altogether. 


3 1 8  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

"Louise,  have  you  forgotten  yet  .  .  .?"  asked 
a  poet  once,  and  the  chances  are  that  Louise  has  not 
forgotten,  while  you  have;  that  is  the  way  of  the 
world,  even  in  Paris,  and  even  in  the  realm  of  the 
personally  conducted.  Over  many  charming  paths 
may  Louise  have  conducted  you  in  the  most  intimate 
of  personal  ways,  but  now,  alas !  as  for  all  the  others, 
for  you,  too,  sophistication  has  set  in,  and  Louise  is 
gone  into  the  limbo  with  the  singer  of  Persephone. 
Theocritus  was  the  very  first  singer  of  the  personally 
conducted;  he  saw  the  shepherds  and  their  flocks, 
and  he  sang  of  them,  and  thereby  he  belongs  in  this 
present  bit  of  philosophy. 

FROM  Theocritus  to  the  pimply  youth  with  the 
megaphone  on  one  of  the  "Seeing  Washington"  cars 
is  a  long  jump,  but  we  are  able  to  take  it.  Everything 
is  possible  to  the  glad  and  gay  spirits  of  our  party. 
The  phrase  has  a  symbolism;  it  is  one  of  the  most 
used  cliches  of  the  tribe;  "our  party"  is  the  formula 
most  constantly  used  by  the  experienced  guides. 
"The  members  of  our  party  will  meet  at  such  and 
such  an  hour"  .  .  .  "the  members  of  our  party 
will  be  glad  to  know,"  etc. 

Our  party,  then,  may  be  imagined  to  have  made 
the  crossing  safely,  in  their  minds,  from  Sicily  and 
the  fields  of  which  Theocritus  sang,  to  the  great  space 
in  front  of  the  new  Union  Station  at  Washington. 
It  is  from  there  some  of  these  cars  start  with  their 
freight  of  the  personally  conducted. 

More  than  all  else,  it  is  sunshine  that  enables  us  to 
complete  the  analogy.  Let  it  be  a  day  of  sunshine  in 
Washington,  and  the  personally  conducted  will  in- 


EUROPE  COMES  TO  AMERICA     319 

deed  have  an  experience  to  remember.  For  there  is 
something  about  our  capital,  when  the  sun  shines, 
that  takes  the  chill  from  those  marble  immensities, 
and  adds  humanity  to  its  somewhat  frosty  splendor. 

It  may  have  been  your  fortune,  in  other  years, 
to  have  been  personally  conducted  about  the  Wash- 
ington that  was  on  just  such  a  day  of  sunshine;  then 
you  can  never  have  forgotten  the  sensation.  From 
the  old  station  of  the  Pennsylvania  you  came  at  once 
into  the  glare  of  the  avenue ;  darky  boys  went  singing 
gayly  up  the  street;  nobody  was  in  a  hurry;  old  white- 
haired  "uncles"  offered  you  violets  and  arbutus  on 
the  corners,  and  couple  after  couple  passed  you 
whom  at  once  you  knew  for  bride  and  bridegroom. 

Well,  it  is  the  same  to-day.  People  are  still 
young;  the  sun  still  shines,  and  Washington,  more 
splendid,  more  marble,  more  gilt,  is  still  the  Mecca 
of  the  brides  and  bridegrooms.  Perhaps  half  the 
young  people  on  the  car  with  you  are  brides  and 
bridegrooms ;  let  us  hope  so ;  they  will  have  a  vapor 
of  romance  about  them  that  will  lessen  the  somewhat 
material  flavor  of  the  "lecture"  you  are  about  to 
receive. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  the  expert  guide  who 
shows  us  Washington — for  a  price — is  somewhat 
removed  from  romance.  Perhaps  he  is  the  same  all 
over  the  world.  And  yet,  and  yet — remembering 
our  Mark  Twain,  we  may  recall  that  it  was  the 
guide's  very  devotion  to  the  historic  and  the  ro- 
mantic that  disturbed  the  patience  of  those  early 
American  pilgrims  of  the  seventies. 

Only  onomatopoeia  could  do  justice  to  the  lecture 
to  which  we  are  treated  as  we  are  personally  con- 


320  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

ducted  about  Washington.  These  lectures,  of 
course,  are  of  the  same  type  everywhere;  we  have 
them  to  confusion  and  in  profusion  here  in  New 
York;  and  we  are  very  bored  by  them,  and  yet  we 
should  not  be ;  for  they  add  daily  to  the  maintenance 
of  that  element  beloved  of  George  Meredith,  the 
Comic  Spirit.  So  let  us  listen,  for  a  moment,  to  our 
friend  of  the  pimples  and  the  persuasive  song,  as 
he  sings  to  us  on  the  Touring  Car  that  is  Seeing 
Washington. 

"On  your  left — the  addition  to  the  White  House 
built  in  the  time  of  President  Rusevelt — on  your  left 
— at  a  total  of  umpsteen  millions,  and  covering  um- 
phaumpha  acres,  the  largest  building  in  the  city.  And 
in  the  south — on  your  right,  open  from  9  A.  M.  until 
4  P.  M. — formerly  the  house  wherein  Congressman 
Blank  resided,  now  the  home  of  the  Indians  when 
they  visit  the  Great  White  Chief,  the  term  they  ap- 
ply to  the  President,  open  from  9  A.  M.  until  4 
P.  M. — on  your  left;  the  first  house  as  we  turn  is 
the  most  magnificent  private  mansion  in  the  world, 
costing  umpsteen  dollars,  with  a  swimming  pool  in 
the  basement,  and  a  private  art  gallery  in  the  garret, 
built  by  one  of  the  leading  society  ladies  in  Washing- 
ton from  designs  by  the  late  Stanford  White — on 
your  left,  the  large  white  building  is  the  new  annex 
for  the  House  of  Representatives,  to  be  connected 
with  the  Capitol  by  an  underground  passage — cost- 
ing umpsteen  and  a  half  millions  and  covering  a 
space  of  — open  from  9  A.  M.  to  4  P.  M. " 

And  so  it  goes,  until  you  are  in  a  welter  of  uon 
your  left"  and  uon  your  right,"  and  you  begin  to 
conceive  of  even  the  President  himself  as  being 


EUROPE  COMES  TO  AMERICA     321 

open  from  9  A.  M.  until  4  P.  M.,  and  you  hail  with 
infinite  relief  a  sudden  and  unrehearsed  shout  from 
the  foreman  of  a  street  gang.  The  gang  is  busy  at 
a  sewer  pipe,  and  the  road  is  blocked  halfway  across 
its  entire  width;  as  the  motor  makes  a  careful  ser- 
pentine motion  to  navigate  the  narrow  channel  prop- 
erly, the  foreman  sings  out  to  the  car,  with  a  large 
Irish  grin  on  his  face : 

"This  sewer  was  laid  by  George  Washington — 
and  that's  what's  the  matter  with  it." 

Whereupon  all  the  carload  really  drops  its  timor- 
ous reserve  and  laughs,  and  at  last,  through  our  Irish 
friend,  the  ice  of  being  personally  conducted  is 
broken. 

Our  guide,  by  the  way,  may  be  suspected  of  hu- 
mor, though  you  never  can  tell.  He  gives  us  the  in- 
formation that  the  statue  on  the  dome  of  the  Capitol 
is  uthe  largest  lady  in  Washington,"  and  we  at  once 
think  of  that  fine  old  jest  about  the  lady  on  top  of 
the  Siegessauele  in  Berlin  being  the  only  female  in 
Berlin  "die  kein  Verhaelthiss  hat,"  and  you  must  get 
a  German  friend  to  translate  that  for  you,  since  our 
own  blushes  are  too  much  on  a  hair  trigger. 

Also,  when  the  guide  avers  that  in  the  matter  of 
new  subterranean  passage  between  the  Capitol  and 
the  annexes  this  will  be  the  first  time  in  the  world 
that  "underground  legislation  has  been  carried  on," 
we  suspect  him  as  merely  voicing  him  who  wrote  the 
lecture,  and  that  must  have  been  a  man  with  humor 
in  him.  But  he  of  the  pimples  does  not  smile;  he  is 
doubtless  too  tired  of  his  story  to  know  what  smiling 
is.  At  any  rate,  the  touch  about  underground  legis- 
lation is  a  fine  bit  of  backhand  irony. 


322  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

WHAT  sticks  out  most  plainly  is  that  it  is  the  cost 
and  the  size  that  are  most  insisted  on  in  everything 
shown.  This  building  cost  that;  that  covers  so  many 
acres;  and  that  is  the  "largest  in  the  world."  The 
Congressional  Library  holds  so  many  books,  and  the 
gold  on  the  dome  is  worth  so  much  money;  but  noth- 
ing is  said  of  the  artists  who  have  painted  its  in- 
teriors. 

Indeed,  this  is  a  distinct  point:  In  all  the  day's 
harangue  only  the  names  of  Stanford  White  as  archi- 
tect and  of  Thomas  Nelson  Page  as  owner  of  a 
splendid  house  were  named  by  this  person  so  fluent 
in  dollars  and  figures.  Statues  after  statues  were 
pointed  out,  but  never  the  name  of  a  single  sculptor. 
No  villa  of  an  American  equivalent  to  the  Munich 
painter,  Stuck,  is  mentioned  where  those  homes  of 
millionaires  abound. 

Is  that  not  something  to  be  rectified?  Surely  even 
the  plain  people  who  like  to  be  personally  conducted 
are  reaching  a  stage  where  they  no  longer  worship 
the  almighty  dollar  quite  to  the  exclusion  of  all  things 
artistic. 

We  know  that  our  millions  do  gaze  upon  the  fres- 
coes in  the  Congressional  Library,  and  that  thousands 
went  only  the  other  day  to  the  Corcoran  to  see  a 
splendid  loan  collection,  and  the  Saint-Gaudens 
statues,  so  those  same  millions  and  thousands  might 
just  as  well  have  their  personally  conducted  infor- 
mation leavened  with  the  names  of  artists  in  the  large 
sense. 

There  is  a  fine  touch  when  we  pass  the  Smithson- 
ian. With  a  brevity  that  is  fine  art  at  its  best,  our 
lecturer  informs  us  that  it  is  the  gift  of  uan  English- 


EUROPE  COMES  TO  AMERICA     323 

man  named  Smithson."  Ah,  if  the  car  were  not  go- 
ing so  fast  and  the  subjects  did  not  change  so  swiftly, 
what  romantic  addenda  could  he  not  have  made  to 
that  simple  statement.  "An  Englishman  named 
Smithson" — yes,  and  one  who  vowed  that  when  his 
Northumbrian  peers  were  dust  his  name  would  be 
known  to  the  world,  and  we  know  that  he  spoke 
truly. 

One  wonders  if  those  other  many  names  that  we 
hear  while  personally  conducted  will  last  long  or 
briefly.  All  those  amazingly  splendid  houses  we 
pass — first  this  well-known  millionaire,  then  that 
Congressman  and  that  Senator,  and  then  again  this 
or  that  "leader  of  society." 

In  the  case  of  the  "leader  of  society,"  we  are  not 
moved  to  ask,  "Where  did  she  get  it?"  but  in  the 
case  of  a  simple  Congressman  we  may  well  wonder 
in  the  same  direction.  Well,  all  this  adds  to  the 
speculative  philosophy  possible  for  the  price  of  being 
personally  conducted. 

It  is  true  that  the  guide  cannot  reveal  to  us  the 
old-time  life  of,  say,  the  Arlington  Hotel ;  everything 
to-day  is  emphasis  on  the  cost  and  history  of  the 
New  Willard.  Yet  what  a  Dickenslike  period  the 
Arlington  stood  for!  Those  strange  dowager- 
duchess  types  in  the  dining-room,  those  shuffling 
darkies — why  have  their  romances  never  been  told? 

Nor  was  there  a  word  said  of  Chamberlin  and  the 
gambling  done  there.  Harvey's  was  named ;  but  then 
Harvey's  no  longer  witnesses  "old  man"  Harvey 
himself  seeing  that  your  kidneys  and  your  sherry  are 
such  as  a  person  who  knows  both  should  have.  Nor, 
as  has  been  hinted,  will  you  be  told  who  made  the 


324  VAGABOND    JOURNEYS 

statue  of  Sherman,  or  of  Sheridan,  or  of  Thomas, 
though  you  may  be  told  what  they  cost. 

However,  we  cannot  have  everything.  We  can- 
not have  the  fun  of  the  thing,  and  all  the  profit,  too. 
Besides,  some  of  us  are  brides  and  bridegrooms,  and 
content  just  to  sit  side  by  side  and  listen,  and  draw  in 
the  delightful  sensation  of  belonging  to  the  largest 
and  richest  nation  of  the  world,  a  nation  that  is  go- 
ing to  make  its  capital  the  most  magnificent  capital 
in  the  world. 

PERHAPS  there  will  always  be  those  who  will  sigh 
for  the  old  Washington,  of  the  herdics  and  the  old 
confidential  darkies  who  lied  picturesquely  to  you, 
and  pointed  out  the  wrong  houses  all  the  time.  But 
those  will  be  simply  sighing  for  their  youth.  The 
thing  for  them  to  do  is  to  accept  the  New  Washing- 
ton that  is  growing  with  great  strides  of  marble  and 
park  into  a  more  spacious  beauty  than  any  Residenz- 
stadt  of  the  old  world,  as  a  thing  to  be  eternally 
proud  of. 

As  for  the  romance — that,  too,  is  like  culture  and 
like  youth;  it  is  a  question  of  temperament;  some  of 
us  have  it  always,  some  of  us  never. 

IF  you  wish  to  keep  your  youth,  fare  forth  on 
journeys.  They  will  start  your  humor,  and  humor 
is  the  half  of  youth. 


INDEX 


Abbey,  Edwin,  69 
Abydos,  45 
Ache,  Caran  d  ,  in 
Adams,  Maude,  85 
Adirondacks,   295 
Akien,  305 
Aix,  1 02 
Alassio,  38 
Alencon,  E.  d',  142 
Alexander,  Geo.,  206 
Alexander,  J.  W.,  68 
Allan,  Maud,  94 
Ammergau,  76,  83,  167 
Anstey,  F.,  178 
Antoine's,  309 
Arlington,  316 
Assouan,  41 
Atlantic,  13-39 
Azores,   14,  33 

Baden-Baden,  102 

Baedeker,  22,  44,  58,  287-300 

Bahr,  Hermann,  66 

Baltimore,  181,  297,  301,  307 

Barbizon,  15 

Barker,  Granville,  169 

Battle  Creek,  17 

Bayreuth,  76,  83,  167,  170 

Bayros,  F.  de,  74 

Beardsley,  A.,  74,  96 

Beerbohm,  Max,  205 

Begas,  R.t  182 

Beggarstaffs,  The,  81 

Bellevue-Paris,  152 

Berenson,  55 

Berlin,    69,    126,    155,    157-202,    225, 

3i9 

Bernstein,  H.,  141 
Bernhardt,  S.,  68 
Bierbaum,  O.  J.,  n,  77,  94 
Biskra,  32 
Bismarck,  66,  95 
Blatchford,  R.,   236 
Bleriot,  137 
Bode,  Von,  52 
Boehme,  M.,  194 
Boeklin,  A.,  41,  164 
Boetel,  H.,  161 
Boldini,   142 

Bond  Street,  22,  142,  203-223,  284 
Boston,  27,  35,  164,   174-183,  301 
Botticelli,  68 
Boylston  Street,  142 
Boulogne,  262 
Brighton,  262,  283 
Broadway,   22 
Broehmse,  A.,  79 
Brillat-Savarin,   154 
Brownings,  The,  58 
Bruant,  A.,   188 
Buelow,  Von,  181 
Bull,   Sir  William,  236 
Burgess,  G.,   182,  309 

Cairo,  36,  41 


Cappiello,  115 
Capri,  36 
Cardona,  J.,  96 
Carlsbad,  102 
Carmencita,  95 
Carpenter,  E.,  57 
Castellane,  B.  de,  142 
Cavalieri,  L.,  161 
Cezanne,  169,   182 
Charpentier,   128 
Chase,  Wm.,  53,  65 
Chavannes,  P.  de,  293 
Cheret,  J.,  96,   in 
Chertsey,  270 
Chicago,  13,  130,  177,  297 
Chickamauga,   316 
Christy,  H.  C,  78 
Cinquevalli,  294 
Cliveden,  252,  256 
Cloud,  St.,  113 
Collyer,  J.,  179 
Coney  Island,  245 
Cook  &  Sons,  46,  131 
Cookham,  257 
Connecticut,  243,   254 
Constantinople,  40 
Cordoba,  M.  de,  79 
Corinth,  Louis,  69 
Corot,  84,   181 
Craig,  Gordon,  93,  171 
Croker,  R.,  37 

Dalmatia,  34 
Daly,  A.,  221 
Davis,  R.  H.,  135 
Davos  Platz,  102 
Daytona,  310 
Dearly,  M.,  142 
Detroit,  35 
Diez,  Julius,  69,   171 
Dobson,  A.,  74 
Dolci,  Carlo,  314 
Dover,  262 

Dresden,   168,   170,  301 
Dublin,  171 
Duncan,  Isadora,  96 
Durieux,  Tilla,  69,  199 

Edward  VII,   142,  233 
Egypt,  40-50 
Emerson,   166 
Ems,    103 
Erlanger,  C.,  128 
Erler,  F.,  171 
Eton,  285 
Eulenburg,  70 
Eve,  Liane  d',  95 

Fiesole,  38 

Fifth  Ave.,  204 

Fisher,  H.,  78 

Fiume,  34 

Flaubert,  69 

Florence,  36,  51-58,  86,  165,  177,  182 

Florida,  302,  309 


326 

Fluelen,  313 
Folkestone,  262,  268 
Fontainebleau,   1 5 
Forain,  in 
Forrestier,  H.,  79 
Fredericks,    155,    160,    194 
Freksa,  F.,   170 
Fuller,  Loie    96 

Galanis,  76 

Galsworthy,  J.,  169,  209 
Garden,  M.,   161 
Gaudens,  St.,  322 
Gauguin,    182 
Genee,  A.,  97 
Genoa,  34 
George  V,  60 
George,  Henry,  233 
Gerome,  41 
Gibraltar,   14,  33 
Gibson,  C.  D.,  78 
Goethe,  86,  89,  170 
Graf,  O.,  82 
Grillparzer,  F.,  88 
Guilbert,  Y.,  96,   171 
Guilford,  272 

Habermann,  Von,  70 
Hamburg,  95 
Hammerstein,   221 
Harden,  M.,  160,  199 
Hardy,  Dudley,  81,  96 
Harland,  H'y,   317 
Harmsworth,  A.,  256 
Hart,  Jerome,   153 
Harvey,  J.  C.,  154 
Harvey  s,  323 
Hassall,  J.,  81 
Harz,  The,  85 
Hatchett's,  307 
Hauptmann.  G..  86,  88 
Havana,   306 
Haymarket,  London,  132 
Hearn,   L.,   49 
Hebbel,  86 
Heilemann,  76 
Heine,  T.  T..   171 
Helleu,    142 
Herkomer,  H.,  180 
Hertenstein,  86,  89-92 
Hewlett,  M.,  58 
Hichens,  R.,  32 
Hoffmann,   Prof.,    173 
Hoffmansthal,  Von,  170 
Hohenzollerns,  The,  163,  182 
Hollaender,  V.,   194 


INDEX 


Hyde,  T.  H.,  142 
Hyde  Park,  223-237, 
Hyndman,  H.  M.,  57 

Ibsen,  86,  169 

Tagow,  Von,  69,  199 
James,  H.,  58 
Jank,  A.,  70 


252 


Japan,  40 

Jeunesse,  E.  La,  142 
Joseph,  St.  (Mo.),  297 
"Jugend,"  69,  78 
Julian's,  55 

Kaulbach.  Von,  97 

Keller,  V9n,  70 

Kempinski's,   158-164,   194 

Kempton  Park,   216 

Kerr,  Alfred,  70 

Kissingen,  102 

Kleist,  H.  Von,  86 

Kley,  H.,  76 

Klimt,  G.,  66 

Krause,  A.,  79 

Kroll's,  161 

Kuessnacht,  89 

Laffitte,   79 

Landor,  W.   S.,  57 

Lang,  A.,  21? 

Lehar,  F.,  24,  96,  125 

Leipzig,  6 1 

Lenbach,  Von,  66,  70,  95 

Leonardo,    53,   65 

Lieland,  Fr.,  88 

Liliencron,  Von,  201 

Lincke,  Paul,   194 

List,  G.  Von,  87 

Lido,  The,  59 

Liverpool,  61,  234 

Lloyd-George,  D.,  25 

Locke,  W.  J.,  317 

London,    15,    36,    60,    81,    143,    173, 

183-187,  303 
Lortzing,   161 
Loti,   P.,   32,  40-50 
Louys,  P.,   128 
Lucerne,  36,  86,  89,  313 
Luxembourg.   The,  72,  95,   192 
Luxor,  41,  48 
Lyme,  Conn.,  16,  83 

Macdonald,  Sir  C.,  206 

Mace,  Jem,  242 

Madeira,    14,   33 

Medeleine,  M.,  94,  97 

Maidenhead,   251,  255 

Makart,  H.,  95 

Manchester,  61,  324 

Manet,  67,  182 

Mansfield,   R.,   181 

Mantegna,  314 

Marienbad,   102 

Marigny  Theater,   117,  188 

Marguery's,  149 

Maryland.  252,  297 

Martin,  Homer,  52,   58 

Mai.irier,  du,  15,  97,  188,  317 

Maxim's,   73,    116,    121,    123-134,   188 

May,  Phil.,  238 

Medici,   Lorenzo  de,   58 

Mell,  Max,  94 

Mendes,  C,   112 

Menzel,  A.,  160 

Merode,  Cleo  de,  66 


INDEX 


327 


Miehl,  F.,  79 

Milan,   55 

Miethke  Gallery,  66 

Millais,  65,   180 

Miller,  Joaquin,  221 

Minneapolis,  37 

Mirbeau,  O.,   n,   112 

Mississippi,  251 

Monet,  C.,  67 

Monte  Carlo,  31,  130,  198,  310 

Montez,  l^ola,  99 

Montmartre,  120,  144,   148,  151,   189 

Morgan,  J.  P.,  136,  229,  239 

Moore,  Geo.,  58,   182 

Morelli,  55 

Morocco,  44 

Moscow,  104 

Moser,  Koloman,  173 

Mucha,  A.  de,  66,  68 

Mueller,  79 

Muensterberg,  167 

Muenzer,  A.,  69,  81 

Muerger,  H.,    188,  317 

Munich,  59-100,   175,  235,  322 

Nankivell,  F.  A.,  80 

Naples,  34,   155,  234,  262 

Newcastle-on-Tyne,  61,  234,  281 

Newnham-Davis,    153-155 

New  Orleans,  76,  115,  119,  153,  309, 

Newport,  299,  303 

New  York,  13,  35,  115,  143,  298,  301 

Nice,  36,  48 

Nietzsche,  83 

Nile,  The,  32 

Nobili,  R.,  54,  58,  182 

Nora,  A.  de,  98 

Ober-Ammergau,  83,  167 
Orage,  A.,  57 
Orange  in  France,  86 
Osiris,  45 
Osterlind,  79 
Otero,  95,   142 
Ouida,  36,   58 

Page,  T.  N.,  322 

Paix,  Cafe  de  la,  112,  135 

Palermo,  34 

"Pan,"   70 

Paris,  13,  36,  60,  63,  76,  79,  111-156, 

187-192,  215,  225,  264,  284,  307, 

314,  316 
Parrish,  M.,  69 


Persia,  44 

3,   St.,  36, 
Pett-Ridge,  W.,   ^78 


Peter's, 


301 


Philadelphia,   178 
Piccadilly.  22,  106,  184,  205 
Pitti  Gallery,  38,  52,   165 
Pittsburgh,   131 
Polaire,  142 
Pomerania,   243,   295 
Pompeii,  35 
Ponta  Delgada,  33 
Porto  Riche,  169 


Prevost,  M.,  112 
Prutscher,  O.,   173 
Putz,  Leo,  82 

Queenstown,  37 

Raphael,  53,  314 
Rapallo,  38 
Raven-Hill,  L.,  81 
Regent  Street,  62 
Reid,  Whitelaw,  229 
Reinhardt,  M.,  76,  93,  170 
Re  jane,  96 

Recnicek,  Von,   73,  77,  96 
Rembrandt,  52 
Ribblesdale,  Lord,  207 
Richardson,  F.,   19 
Richmond  in  Surrey,  269 
Riviera,  The,  304 
Robbe,  M.,  79 
Robey,  Geo.,  171 
Roda-Roda,  76,  201 
Rodin,  67,  112,  113 
Roelshoven,   53 
Rome,  36 
Rops,  F.,  68,  74 
Rossetti,   115,   129 
Rostand,  E.,   142 
Roubille,  141 
Roux,  H.  le,   153 
Ruskin,  J.,  41 

Saharet,  66,  95 

Salem,  Mass.,   106 

Salis,  R.,   190 

Saltus,    Francis,    152 

San  Francisco,  85,   153 

Sargent,  John,  65,  69,  95,   180,  205, 

207-209 

Saybrook  in  Conn.,  297 
Schnitzler,  A.,   125,   169,  201 
Schoenbrunn,  94 
Schopenhauer,  204 
Schwalbach,   102,   108 
Sem,    141 
Seifert,  Dora,  80 
Sevres,  74 
Shakespeare,  86 
Shaw,  Bernard,  217 
Sheridan,  Gen'l,  324 
Sherman,  Gen'l,  298,  324 
Sicily,  165,  318 
Simon,  T.  F.,  79 
"Simplicissimus,"   74 
Sisley,    182 

Sleyogt,  M.,  69,  82,   182 
Smithers,  L.,  209 
Smithson,  322 
Snaith,  J.  C.,  209 
Sorolla,   169 

Sorrento,  33,  36,  155,  26^ 
Sothern,  Dundreary,   147 
Soudan,   47 
Spain,  33 
"Spy,"   205,   221 
Stamboul,  44 
Stanislawsky,  93 
Stevenson,  R.  L.,  n,  49 


328 


INDEX 


Steinlen,   in 

Straus,  Oscar,  194 

Strauss,  R.,  97,  168,  170 

Stratford  on  Avon,  285 

Strozzi,  Palazzo,  54 

Stuck,  F..  41,  64,  67,  70,  82,  322 

Sudermann,  H.,  86 

Suresnes,  121 

Taft,  Lorado,  180 
Tennyson,  221 
Teplitz,  203 
Tetrazzini,  161 
Thebes,  41 
Theocritus,  318 
Thoma,  H.,  79 
Thoma,  L.,  200 
Thomas,  Gen'l,  324 
Thueringen,  296 
Toole,  J.  L.,  147 
Toulouse-Lautrec,  96,  in 
Train,  Geo.  F.,  221 
Trent,   156 
Troubetskoi,  142 
Troyon,  84 
Tuscany,   155,  296 
Twain,  Mark.  221,  319 

Uffici  Gallery,  36,  52,  65,  165,  177 

Vandam,  A.,  317 
Venice,  59,  262 


Verlaine,  P.,  in,  113,  192 
Versailles,   113,  121,  152 
Vienna,    13,    66,    94,    125,    156,    162, 
173,  200-202,  258,  307 

William  of  Germany,  162 

Wagner,  RM  64,  305 

Waldoff,  Claire,  171 

Walkley,  A.  B.,  97 

Wall,  Berry,  221 

Wanamaker,  J.,  248 

Washington,  D.  C,  31,  179,  300-324 

Watteau    74,  238 

Wedekind,  F.,   77,   169,  201 

Wertheimers,  The,  207 

Wetzel,  I.  R.,  82 

Whistler,   72,    182,   221 

White,  Stanford,  322 

Whitechapel,  237 

Whiting,  L.,  57 

Widmann,  J.  V.,  88 

Wiesbaden,  69,  85,  102,  106 

Wiesenthal  Sisters,  94 

Wilde,  O.,  83,  97,  113,  173,  209,  305 

Willette,  A.,  79,  in 

Windsor,  251 

Wolzogen,  E.  Von,  86,  153 

Yerkes,  238 

Zorn,  A.,  65 
Zuloaga,  95,  96,  169 


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